Active Directory Fundamentals

Framework of Active Directory

March 2, 2021
The Active Directory structure is built on the domain level. The framework that holds the objects can be viewed at different levels namely forest, domain trees and domains. At the top of the level is the forest. A forest holds all the Active directory data. The first domain added to the forest is the forest root domain. Information exchange happens within a forest. All domains within a…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

Trusts in Active Directory: An overview

March 2, 2021
What you will learn from this article: An Active Directory network may contain several domains in a hierarchical fashion. All the resources of one domain are not directly available to every other domain. The availability of resource sharing is governed by Active Directory trusts. In this article, we will take a look at what are trusts in Active Directory, how they are categorized, and the…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

What are Domain Controllers?

March 2, 2021
 What are Domain Controllers (DC)?  The computer machines that function as servers in the domain can either be a member server or a DC. A member server belongs to a particular domain, but it does not authenticate the users of that domain. There is no data about the entire AD network installed in it. DCs on the other hand, are servers responsible for allowing access to domain resources. It…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

What is Global Catalog Server in Active Directory?

March 2, 2021
What you will learn from this article: An Active Directory network would be made of forests and domains. The domain controllers (DC) of a particular domain would contain all the information of the domain they belong to. However, these DCs would not contain information about objects from other domains under the same forest. This may pose a problem when there is a need to look up information…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

Active Directory FSMO Roles Explained

March 2, 2021
What you will learn from this article: Active Directory (AD) relies on the AD replication process to keep the information updated across all its domain controllers (DC) in the network. This replication is done through the multi-master replication method, where if the information is modified in one DC, that DC initiates the replication process to update the other DCs. You can learn more about AD…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

Authentication vs authorization process: An explanation

March 2, 2021
What you’ll learn: Active Directory authentication and authorization are security processes. These processes are necessary for any environment so that the resources of an environment are not misused by anyone. In this article, we will take a look at authentication vs authorization in an AD environment, and how AD tackles these processes. Before going further, let’s take a look at…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

DNS and Active Directory

March 2, 2021
Domain Name System (DNS) is a name resolution method that is used to resolve host names to IP addresses. It is used on TCP/IP networks and across the internet. DNS is a namespace. Active Directory is built on DNS. DNS namespace is used internet wide while the Active Directory namespace is used across a private network. The reason behind the choice of DNS is that it is highly scalable and it is an…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

An Introduction to Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

March 2, 2021
What is LDAP? The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, commonly known as LDAP, is a communication protocol used to access directory servers. In other words, LDAP is used to store, update and retrieve data from a directory structure. The term “lightweight” is used in comparison with X.500, which was the previous standard for directory services. X.500 was complicated, and it relied on…
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Active Directory Fundamentals

Benefits of Active Directory

March 2, 2021
What is Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service provided by Microsoft designed for Windows domain networks to organize and manage users, attributes, memberships, accounts, and more. It offers centralized authorization and authentication to maintain seamless and secure management of resources and data. AD is crucial for managing users and devices across networks and locations…
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Recent AD News

Microsoft launches Microsoft 365 Attack Simulation Training Capability

March 2, 2021
In a recent announcement, Microsoft said that certain subscribers to the Microsoft Defender for Microsoft 365 service can now access a new “attack simulation training” feature. The feature first introduced at the RSA conference last year has finally been made available to customers. The feature is a result of Microsoft collaborating with Terranova Security in an attempt to keep phishing…
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