Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 75 | Page 48

COUNTRY FOCUS : GERMANY
searching for ways to check the security status of the company ’ s identity infrastructure .
“ We ’ ve been using AD since Windows NT ,” Schulz said . “ It ’ s the central authentication point for all systems . Without AD , practically nothing works : no remote connections , no access .”
Evaluating Active Directory security his research eventually led him to Purple Knight , a free tool for assessing the security of AD and Entra ID ( formerly Azure AD ) environments . He learned that Purple Knight is a leading community tool for detecting indicators of exposure ( IOEs ) and indicators of compromise ( IOCs ) in hybrid AD infrastructures .
Schulz downloaded Purple Knight , a free Semperis tool , and began using the tool to conduct a comprehensive series of tests against the most common and effective attack vectors .
Purple Knight detects risky configurations and vulnerabilities , generates a security posture report across five categories , and provides recommendations for prioritising remediation actions . The tool checks for more than 130 IOEs and IOCs and returns a security score that enables an organisation to assess its security status , considering possible threats . The average score for first-time Purple Knight users is 68 %, a value that always gives reason to deal more intensively with the topic .
“ After Purple Knight ’ s analysis , we set out to improve our own status quo ,” Schulz explained . “ Because if a cyberattacker actually got to our Active Directory , we would have to rebuild everything . So , to optimise our security , we started looking for the reasons for the vulnerabilities and what was actually missing .”
In the spotlight : Threat detection and AD recovery
Two areas proved especially critical for the company : detection and response to current threats , and rapid recovery of Active Directory in the event of an actual compromise . Yamaha Europe decided to implement two solutions from Active Directory specialist Semperis : Directory Services Protector and Active Directory Forest Recovery .
“ We ’ re not huge ,” said Schulz , explaining Yamaha Music Europe ’ s decision to work with Semperis . “ For us , it was important to find a solution that fits and a partner who guarantees fast support .”
When the time came to deploy the solutions , installation took just one day , utilising previously submitted server specifications .
Continuous Active Directory monitoring Semperis Directory Services Protector is the industry ’ s most comprehensive identity threat detection and response ( ITDR ) platform . The need to deploy an ITDR
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