Azure & Active Directory Center

Recap of ENow’s webinar discussing the importance of Active Directory Monitoring & Reporting, and best practices that can be implemented with a robust Active Directory Monitoring tool

Monitoring the vitals of Active Directory is crucial for the network health and security of any organization. However, there’s a big difference between Active Directory monitoring and Domain Controller monitoring. There’s also a big difference between monitoring and reporting, and both are necessary to ensure Active Directory doesn’t become a liability for your organization.

To help IT Pros learn more about the intricacies of monitoring Active Directory,  ENow hosted a webinar on the topic with Sander Berkouwer, Microsoft MVP, and Jay Gundotra, Technical Founder & CEO of ENow.

Couldn’t attend this time? We’ve got you covered. Below you’ll find some key takeaways from the webinar, as well as a recording of the webinar. 

A new year has dawned . . . and there's smooth sailing with Active Directory updates.

In the January 2023 cumulative updates for all current versions of Windows Server, Microsoft addressed two LDAP vulnerabilities affecting Domain Controllers

Christmas is arguably one of the few time periods every year, where droves of IT people are off work, globally. This makes December an odd month from an IT Pro point of view. Especially, since it seems to be high season for adversaries. With your Microsoft-oriented networking infrastructure up to date and monitoring in place, however, there is little to worry about.

If you were among the ‘lucky’ people to run shifts this holiday season, this blogpost might not contain anything new. If you just got out of ‘hibernation’, Enow Software is here to get you back up to speed.

Many people might argue that November 2022 was a bad month for Active Directory. Yet, Microsoft’s intentions with the November 8, 2022, Windows Server cumulative updates were good.

Updates to Azure AD Connect, Azure AD and Defender for Identity might make identity admins take their breaths toward the inescapable Christmas time as they saw updates and improvements this last month. Let’s dive in!

Part #2: Tips for Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

In Part 1, I gave you an introduction to Microsoft Graph and specifically to the PowerShell SDK. In this Part 2 article, I’m sharing some tips which should help with your daily tasks. Of course, these tips also apply when you use the module for automation.

Active Directory, AD CS, Azure AD Connect, and Azure MFA Server are all Microsoft on-premises identity products. From the cloud side of things, Azure AD and Defender for Identity swoop in. All these products and services saw updates and improvements this last month. Let’s make sure you didn’t miss a thing!

Microsoft Ignite was held on October 12 to 14th 2022, and was a truly hybrid event, with in-person sessions held at the Seattle conference center as well as pre-recorded content and Teams live-event style sessions being streamed around the world. The big catch phrase of the conference this year was “Do more with less”. As organizations adapt to new challenges, they are looking to have more choice in the way they work and to get better results with less friction. The updates to products revealed at Microsoft Ignite were aimed at helping customers get the full value of Microsoft’s technologies.

Part #1: Introduction Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

As mentioned in a previous article about Azure AD custom roles for Exchange Online administrators here, Microsoft has planned retirement of their PowerShell modules. You can read more about this in your Message Center in MC281145:

Microsoft’s identity portfolio consists of many products, like Active Directory, AD FS, Azure AD Connect, Defender for Identity, Microsoft Identity Manager and Azure AD. Many organizations utilize these products and services in a Hybrid Identity setup. While it looks like Azure AD sees 3 changes per day on average, Microsoft’s on-premises products also see changes. More than 3, actually, this month:

It doesn’t matter whether you refer to it as Kerberos Armoring, Flexible Authentication Secure Tunneling (FAST), RFC4581, RFC6113, or Kerberos pre-authentication… it is time to deploy it in your Active Directory environments.