Active Directory Recovery and Its Impact on ROI

Aashish Yadav | June 28, 2022 | 664 views | Read Time : 8 min

Active Directory Recovery and Its Impact on ROI
Active Directory manages users, apps, and resources and handles user authorization and authentication.

Cyberattacks are on the rise throughout every sector, disrupting consumer goods and services, organizations, and endangering public safety. Businesses that haven't been attacked can have trouble justifying a cyber-first business recovery strategy.

However, as more cyberattacks make headlines and the cost of ransom payments and cyber insurance grows, corporate leaders must prioritize building a proven cyber-first business recovery strategy. The first step is to safeguard the Active Directory (AD), which is most businesses’ primary identity database globally.

Active Directory is the primary access point for cybercriminals: 90% of the cyberattacks Mandiant reported, include Active Directory as the first attack vector or the gateway to elevated access. Most attacks in recent years, including SolarWinds, included compromised credentials.

Cyberattack victims soon realize that every minute matters during a breach. Failure to effectively restore Active Directory would lead to a second assault using the same strategies as the first.

The issue is not whether a company can afford a rapid, cyber-first Active Directory approach. The question is how Active Directory can help businesses safeguard their data and also boost their ROI.

What Benefits Does Active Directory Hold for Businesses?

There are several ways in which Active Directory can help businesses:

Centralized Data Repository

In a multi-master database, Active Directory holds the identification information of apps, users, and resources. The Active Directory database stores data as objects and has a capacity of 2 billion objects. Users can use this identification data to access resources from anywhere on the network. Administrators can handle corporate application authentication and permission from a centralized place. Identity would be copied across numerous systems without directory services, making it impossible for administrators to oversee operations.


Minimized Data Replication

Multiple domain controllers are necessary for complicated business needs like branch offices. Sub-domain controllers are aware of changes made to the Active Directory database if identities are controlled from a centralized approach. With a centralized domain controller, Active Directory can delegate duties across the business, as well as tools and utilities for adding, removing, and modifying active identities and objects. It employs a synchronization method to guarantee that data is consistent across all domain controllers. As a result, it enables making company-wide adjustments with a few mouse clicks.


Security Auditing Capabilities

Regular audits assist you in understanding new security dangers. Active Directory enables the collection and auditing of identity infrastructure events like authentication, directory service changes, and access violations. It also facilitates the collection of data from a centralized place for the purpose of debugging authentication and authorization difficulties that users can encounter.


Network Security

Active Directory improves security across an organization. Higher-level management authorities can delegate authorization for resources and apps to other administrators or users through delegation. Active Directory items are linked in a hierarchical manner. Permissions are inherited by an object in the AD tree from its parent objects. These features guarantee that users are uniquely and securely recognized. Administrators can build and update permissions from a single database, decreasing the possibility of inaccurate or outdated configuration.


Calculating Your Active Directory Recovery ROI

Although every IT manager or administrator understands that an effective Active Directory recovery plan is a critical component of any business-developed standard, assessing the practical ROI (return on investment) of an optimized Active Directory recovery plan is frustratingly complex. Here are important ways:


Operational Losses

It's probable that a significant portion of your operations depend on Active Directory to authenticate users as the foundation for delivering access to apps, systems, and data. How much money or productivity will your company lose for every hour Active Directory is down? How many hours, days, or weeks would it require before the company reaches a point of no return and is unable to recover financially? Remember the City of Baltimore's ransomware attack? Their operational recovery took several months and cost more than $18 million.


Lack of Plan That Includes AD

If your company is mature enough, it has a BC/DR strategy to restore business activities after an outage. Most disaster plans account for the loss of infrastructure or location. Few organizations have a strategy for recovering operations following a hack, particularly ransomware. How you restore Active Directory depends on what hackers changed in Active Directory. How far back must you go to get a known secure Active Directory version? What Active Directory-dependent systems, services, and apps won't work if Active Directory is recovered to an earlier state? Do you have a recent malware-free backup to restore? Without a strategy or understanding of what changed in Active Directory before recovery, your company will spend immeasurable time correcting all the issues.


Recovery Might Not Be an Answer

If all the modifications performed by the bad dudes during an assault are, say, adding an account to the Domain Admins group, then restoring Active Directory to a few days ago or last month would not be the best solution. Instead, perhaps a less expensive approach would be to monitor changes in Active Directory and have the option to either prevent changes to "protected" accounts (such as the Domain Admins group) or immediately return a change to a sanctioned configuration.


Closing Lines

In other words, the ROI of Active Directory recovery is significantly more dependent on your present capacity to return to a known-productive and known-secure state post-attack than it is on an online ROI calculation that ignores the various factors involved in a ransomware attack. By running through certain situations and considering your present recovery capabilities, you will uncover expenses that can be avoided by implementing a suitable Active Directory recovery solution—one that is intended to guard against, prevent, and recover from malicious modifications to Active Directory.


QNA

How to restore the Active Directory?

  • Restart the server
  • From the boot menu, press F8 to access advanced settings
  • Scroll down to the Directory Services Restore Mode option
  • Press the Enter key to restart the computer in safe mode. It will not launch the directory services


How can I restore a failed domain controller?

Restoring a Domain Controller in non-authoritarian mode
  • In the GUI, choose the Restore wizard
  • Find the required DC
  • From the recovery menu, choose Restore Entire VM
  • Then, choose a recovery point
  • Select whether the restoration should take place in the original location or a new one
  • Complete the steps necessary to complete the procedure.


For Active Directory, what is "Recovery Manager"?

The Recovery Manager for Active Directory allows you to automate backups and easily compare a backup to the present value of Active Directory to identify changes and restore data immediately.

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Laminar Expands Data Security Platform with Support for Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive

GlobeNewswire | August 31, 2023

Laminar, the leading data security posture management (DSPM) company, recently acquired by Rubrik, the Zero Trust Data Security™ Company, today announced that it has added support for Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. Customers can now use Laminar to continually discover overexposed and unprotected sensitive data in OneDrive and Google Drive, enabling proactive risk remediation and data leak detection. With this expanded support, organizations can safeguard sensitive data across their entire digital landscape, including major cloud service providers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure as well as Snowflake, BigQuery, and other SaaS applications. As organizations increasingly leverage cloud file-sharing services like Google Drive and OneDrive for seamless data sharing and storage, the potential risks associated with data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance violations have grown significantly. Data security and governance teams’ limited visibility into the contents of these files can lead to unprotected sensitive data. Additionally, unintentional file sharing and incorrect permissions can lead to oversharing internally and externally. To address these challenges, the Laminar Data Security Platform takes an agnostic approach to data security; discovering, classifying, and securing sensitive data as it moves across an organization’s digital environment, including collaborative cloud-based services. Laminar provides secure scanning, ensuring data is not removed from the customer environment. With the platform, data security and governance teams can see and secure enterprise data consistently across the entire digital landscape. "Today’s businesses are powered by cloud file-sharing services, which enable easy and rapid collaboration. This is why it is so critical to have a comprehensive approach to data security, so as to not leave these important files unprotected. With the integration of Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive support into the Laminar Data Security Platform, we believe this is a giant step towards solving this sensitive data security challenge," said Amit Shaked, CEO and co-founder at Laminar. "We recognize that data security is a collective responsibility, encompassing every individual within an organization. Laminar is now positioned to provide an agile platform that safeguards sensitive information, no matter where it resides or whether it's utilized by developers, data scientists, or any employee across an organization." The news follows the acquisition of Laminar by Rubrik, the Zero Trust Data Security Company™. Together, Rubrik and Laminar create the industry’s first complete cyber resilience offering of its kind bringing together cyber recovery and posture across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS. About Laminar Laminar, a Rubrik company, combines cloud-native design with deep security expertise to provide the visibility and control organizations need to protect their most sensitive data. The Laminar Data Security Platform continuously discovers and classifies cloud data, structured and unstructured, across managed and self-hosted data stores, including unknown shadow data, without the data ever leaving your environment. It analyzes access, usage patterns, and security posture, and provides actionable, guided remediation for data security risk. Together, Rubrik and Laminar enable organizations to be even more proactive in the fight against cyberattacks and provide businesses with a complete cyber resilience solution. About Rubrik Rubrik is a cybersecurity company. We are the pioneer in Zero Trust Data Security™. Companies around the world rely on Rubrik for business resilience against cyber attacks, malicious insiders, and operational disruptions. Rubrik Security Cloud, powered by machine intelligence, enables our customers to secure data across their enterprise, cloud, and SaaS applications. We automatically protect data from cyber attacks, continuously monitor data risks, and quickly recover data and applications.

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Software Security

Cyolo Unveils Key Insights into OT Cybersecurity Threat Landscape from KuppingerCole and Releases Cyolo 4.3 for Enhanced Security

Business Wire | September 27, 2023

Today, Cyolo, provider of the fastest and most secure zero-trust access and connectivity solution for hybrid organizations with IT and OT, in partnership with KuppingerCole, released an industry analysis focused on zero trust and remote access for operational technology (OT) environments. The analysis reveals key insights about the OT cybersecurity threat landscape, outlines high-level security architecture for OT, critical infrastructure systems (CIS) and industrial control systems (ICS), and evaluates key requirements of security regulations and frameworks. OT environments experience the same kinds of threats as enterprise IT – including ransomware, account takeovers, APTs, and Supply Chains as vectors – while experiencing expanded OT-specific threats. While traditional IT security tools may be adapted, developing robust security architectures for OT environments is inherently complex compared to their IT counterparts. Its unique nature, from equipment and software to communication protocols requires dedicated OT security solutions. Cyolo can help organizations with OT infrastructure to define and manage access control to those complex environments, said John Tolbert, Lead Analyst at KuppingerCole. Overall key insights include: OT Threat Landscape. Heightened geopolitical factors have intensified attacks on OT and ICS, posing significant consequences ranging from operational disruptions and service denial to financial repercussions and potential harm to human well-being. Core Cybersecurity Regulations. The risks and consequences of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure advanced regulations globally mandating secure architectures and technical controls. KRITIS and the follow-on IT Security Act 2.0 are related examples of such regulations, as well as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. OT Security Architectures and Key Functionalities. There are eight areas of functionality that are central to effective OT security architectures. Cybersecurity architectures for OT must address asset discovery, access control, IT security tool integration, detection and response capabilities, and OT protocol level threats. As the analysis breaks down, within critical infrastructure interruptions and downtime are not an option. To address the increasing need for secure access in OT environments, Cyolo introduced Cyolo 4.3, which expands key capabilities with more layers of security and making the product easier than ever to use for both administrators and end users in the industrial space. With Cyolo 4.3, industrial organizations will be able to extend their multi-factor authentication (MFA) across environments through an integration with Duo Security to support their physical tokens as required. Additionally, the company has implemented another layer of security for file transfer within the OT/ICS environment, through query anti-virus software to scan files before they are delivered to their destination. Cyolo is also adapting for further usability, allowing teams to securely invite external users by generating a secure one-time password; and import groups from existing IdPs, using SCIM. “Ensuring the security of critical infrastructure and industrial processes has become increasingly critical as organizations unite their IT and OT systems. This convergence has expanded the OT threat landscape and introduced significant cybersecurity challenges, as the once-isolated OT networks are now vulnerable to the same threats that have targeted IT networks for years” said Joe O'Donnell, Vice President ICS/OT of Cyolo. “With Cyolo 4.3, industrial entities can confidently navigate the complexities of the modern threat landscape and fortify their defenses against evolving cyber threats.” The announcement of Cyolo 4.3 highlights the company’s commitment to advancing zero-trust capabilities and it comes on the heels of Cyolo being listed as a Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner® “Market Guide for Zero Trust Network Access” report for the second consecutive year and recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the 2023 North American New Product Innovation Award for Secure Remote Access to Operational Infrastructure and Industrial Control Systems (OT/ICS). As the threats to critical infrastructure continue to evolve, Cyolo zero-trust access solution continues to provide the utmost protection and ease of use. To learn more about Cyolo 4.3, visit here. Access the report for a full view of the industry here. Register here to attend the joint webinar from Cyolo and KuppingerCole on how to achieve secure remote access for OT environments, to be held on Tuesday, October 10 at 7 a.m. PT. About Cyolo Cyolo helps hybrid organizations in the IT and OT spaces to stay safe, secure and productive in an era of distributed workforces and unprecedented cyberthreats. Cyolo’s next-generation zero-trust access solution enables all users, including employees, third parties as well as remote and on-site workers, to connect to their working environments seamlessly and securely via modern identity-based access. Providing one unified solution that integrates with the existing tech stack and deploys easily in the cloud, on-premises or in a hybrid model, Cyolo empowers the global workforce to securely access anything from anywhere.

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Platform Security

SentinelOne Launches RemoteOps Forensics for Faster Incident Response

SentinelOne | September 18, 2023

SentinelOne, a global leader in autonomous cybersecurity, is addressing the pressing need for rapid and effective responses to the escalating wave of cyber breaches. Today, the company announced the launch of Singularity RemoteOps Forensics, a pioneering digital forensics product designed to streamline and accelerate incident response readiness. This innovative solution promises to empower organizations of all sizes, ushering in a new era of efficient and scalable investigation and response capabilities in the face of evolving cybersecurity challenges. Integrated seamlessly with the SentinelOne Singularity Platform and as an add-on to Sentinel One's Endpoint and Cloud Workload Security solutions, RemoteOps Forensics offers a rapid, adaptable digital forensics and incident response solution. Security teams can leverage this tool to enhance efficiency by optimizing resources and accelerating Mean Time to Resolution. With the capability for targeted investigations on various assets, including endpoints and server workloads, it enables conditional trigger-based evidence collection. This automation efficiently gathers evidence, such as process data, ports, service listings, MFT, Amcache, JumpLists, and memory dumps, orchestrating them in under a minute. Consolidating evidence into the Singularity Security DataLake allows for the correlation of SentinelOne and partner data with forensics data in a unified search, facilitating a comprehensive view of attacks, rapid root cause identification, and risk mitigation. Furthermore, it provides the ability to analyze collected evidence alongside Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) data within a single console, empowering proactive defense against future threats. The integration and analysis of this combined data unveil concealed indicators of compromise, detect advanced attack patterns, and offer insights into threat actors' tactics, techniques, and procedures. RemoteOps Forensics is a cost-effective and resource-efficient solution that seamlessly integrates with the SentinelOne agent. This integration alleviates the necessity of deploying and provisioning multiple tools throughout the investigative process, resulting in significant time and resource savings for organizations. In addition, this innovative solution prioritizes the maintenance of forensic integrity by minimizing changes made to the disk, and it leverages SentinelOne's anti-tampering and metadata collection capabilities to safeguard data integrity. In doing so, it streamlines investigations and upholds the highest standards of forensic rigor, reinforcing organizations' cybersecurity defenses with a comprehensive and efficient approach. Jane Wong, Senior Vice President of Products and Strategy at SentinelOne, said, As timelines for reporting and responding to breaches shrink, it is imperative that the security teams have advanced forensics capabilities that can make investigations faster and more efficient, and with Singularity RemoteOps Forensics, the team is delivering them. [Source – Business Wire] SentinelOne's new forensic capabilities help develop incident response by enabling security teams to conduct thorough investigations more quickly, Jane also mentioned eliminating the requirement for specialized expertise or additional tools. About SentinelOne SentinelOne is a leading provider of autonomous cybersecurity solutions. With its identified Singularity Platform, the company excels at detecting, preventing, and responding swiftly to cyber threats. SentinelOne enables businesses to protect their endpoints, cloud workloads, containers, and identities, as well as their mobile and network-connected devices, with unparalleled speed, accuracy, and ease of use. With a formidable clientele comprising over 11,000 customers, SentinelOne has proven itself as the trusted guardian of a secure digital future.

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Data Security, Platform Security

Laminar Expands Data Security Platform with Support for Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive

GlobeNewswire | August 31, 2023

Laminar, the leading data security posture management (DSPM) company, recently acquired by Rubrik, the Zero Trust Data Security™ Company, today announced that it has added support for Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. Customers can now use Laminar to continually discover overexposed and unprotected sensitive data in OneDrive and Google Drive, enabling proactive risk remediation and data leak detection. With this expanded support, organizations can safeguard sensitive data across their entire digital landscape, including major cloud service providers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure as well as Snowflake, BigQuery, and other SaaS applications. As organizations increasingly leverage cloud file-sharing services like Google Drive and OneDrive for seamless data sharing and storage, the potential risks associated with data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance violations have grown significantly. Data security and governance teams’ limited visibility into the contents of these files can lead to unprotected sensitive data. Additionally, unintentional file sharing and incorrect permissions can lead to oversharing internally and externally. To address these challenges, the Laminar Data Security Platform takes an agnostic approach to data security; discovering, classifying, and securing sensitive data as it moves across an organization’s digital environment, including collaborative cloud-based services. Laminar provides secure scanning, ensuring data is not removed from the customer environment. With the platform, data security and governance teams can see and secure enterprise data consistently across the entire digital landscape. "Today’s businesses are powered by cloud file-sharing services, which enable easy and rapid collaboration. This is why it is so critical to have a comprehensive approach to data security, so as to not leave these important files unprotected. With the integration of Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive support into the Laminar Data Security Platform, we believe this is a giant step towards solving this sensitive data security challenge," said Amit Shaked, CEO and co-founder at Laminar. "We recognize that data security is a collective responsibility, encompassing every individual within an organization. Laminar is now positioned to provide an agile platform that safeguards sensitive information, no matter where it resides or whether it's utilized by developers, data scientists, or any employee across an organization." The news follows the acquisition of Laminar by Rubrik, the Zero Trust Data Security Company™. Together, Rubrik and Laminar create the industry’s first complete cyber resilience offering of its kind bringing together cyber recovery and posture across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS. About Laminar Laminar, a Rubrik company, combines cloud-native design with deep security expertise to provide the visibility and control organizations need to protect their most sensitive data. The Laminar Data Security Platform continuously discovers and classifies cloud data, structured and unstructured, across managed and self-hosted data stores, including unknown shadow data, without the data ever leaving your environment. It analyzes access, usage patterns, and security posture, and provides actionable, guided remediation for data security risk. Together, Rubrik and Laminar enable organizations to be even more proactive in the fight against cyberattacks and provide businesses with a complete cyber resilience solution. About Rubrik Rubrik is a cybersecurity company. We are the pioneer in Zero Trust Data Security™. Companies around the world rely on Rubrik for business resilience against cyber attacks, malicious insiders, and operational disruptions. Rubrik Security Cloud, powered by machine intelligence, enables our customers to secure data across their enterprise, cloud, and SaaS applications. We automatically protect data from cyber attacks, continuously monitor data risks, and quickly recover data and applications.

Read More

Software Security

Cyolo Unveils Key Insights into OT Cybersecurity Threat Landscape from KuppingerCole and Releases Cyolo 4.3 for Enhanced Security

Business Wire | September 27, 2023

Today, Cyolo, provider of the fastest and most secure zero-trust access and connectivity solution for hybrid organizations with IT and OT, in partnership with KuppingerCole, released an industry analysis focused on zero trust and remote access for operational technology (OT) environments. The analysis reveals key insights about the OT cybersecurity threat landscape, outlines high-level security architecture for OT, critical infrastructure systems (CIS) and industrial control systems (ICS), and evaluates key requirements of security regulations and frameworks. OT environments experience the same kinds of threats as enterprise IT – including ransomware, account takeovers, APTs, and Supply Chains as vectors – while experiencing expanded OT-specific threats. While traditional IT security tools may be adapted, developing robust security architectures for OT environments is inherently complex compared to their IT counterparts. Its unique nature, from equipment and software to communication protocols requires dedicated OT security solutions. Cyolo can help organizations with OT infrastructure to define and manage access control to those complex environments, said John Tolbert, Lead Analyst at KuppingerCole. Overall key insights include: OT Threat Landscape. Heightened geopolitical factors have intensified attacks on OT and ICS, posing significant consequences ranging from operational disruptions and service denial to financial repercussions and potential harm to human well-being. Core Cybersecurity Regulations. The risks and consequences of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure advanced regulations globally mandating secure architectures and technical controls. KRITIS and the follow-on IT Security Act 2.0 are related examples of such regulations, as well as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. OT Security Architectures and Key Functionalities. There are eight areas of functionality that are central to effective OT security architectures. Cybersecurity architectures for OT must address asset discovery, access control, IT security tool integration, detection and response capabilities, and OT protocol level threats. As the analysis breaks down, within critical infrastructure interruptions and downtime are not an option. To address the increasing need for secure access in OT environments, Cyolo introduced Cyolo 4.3, which expands key capabilities with more layers of security and making the product easier than ever to use for both administrators and end users in the industrial space. With Cyolo 4.3, industrial organizations will be able to extend their multi-factor authentication (MFA) across environments through an integration with Duo Security to support their physical tokens as required. Additionally, the company has implemented another layer of security for file transfer within the OT/ICS environment, through query anti-virus software to scan files before they are delivered to their destination. Cyolo is also adapting for further usability, allowing teams to securely invite external users by generating a secure one-time password; and import groups from existing IdPs, using SCIM. “Ensuring the security of critical infrastructure and industrial processes has become increasingly critical as organizations unite their IT and OT systems. This convergence has expanded the OT threat landscape and introduced significant cybersecurity challenges, as the once-isolated OT networks are now vulnerable to the same threats that have targeted IT networks for years” said Joe O'Donnell, Vice President ICS/OT of Cyolo. “With Cyolo 4.3, industrial entities can confidently navigate the complexities of the modern threat landscape and fortify their defenses against evolving cyber threats.” The announcement of Cyolo 4.3 highlights the company’s commitment to advancing zero-trust capabilities and it comes on the heels of Cyolo being listed as a Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner® “Market Guide for Zero Trust Network Access” report for the second consecutive year and recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the 2023 North American New Product Innovation Award for Secure Remote Access to Operational Infrastructure and Industrial Control Systems (OT/ICS). As the threats to critical infrastructure continue to evolve, Cyolo zero-trust access solution continues to provide the utmost protection and ease of use. To learn more about Cyolo 4.3, visit here. Access the report for a full view of the industry here. Register here to attend the joint webinar from Cyolo and KuppingerCole on how to achieve secure remote access for OT environments, to be held on Tuesday, October 10 at 7 a.m. PT. About Cyolo Cyolo helps hybrid organizations in the IT and OT spaces to stay safe, secure and productive in an era of distributed workforces and unprecedented cyberthreats. Cyolo’s next-generation zero-trust access solution enables all users, including employees, third parties as well as remote and on-site workers, to connect to their working environments seamlessly and securely via modern identity-based access. Providing one unified solution that integrates with the existing tech stack and deploys easily in the cloud, on-premises or in a hybrid model, Cyolo empowers the global workforce to securely access anything from anywhere.

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