Privileged Domain Account Protection: How to Limit Credentials Exposure

  • Tuesday, 10 Mar 2015 3:00PM EDT (10 Mar 2015 19:00 UTC)
  • Speaker: Mike Pilkington

In most enterprise networks, there are a number of privileged accounts that are used for maintaining the Windows domain, including accounts for domain administration, configuration management, patch management, vulnerability analysis, and incident response. In all of these cases, the accounts have the ability to logon to most, if not all, Windows hosts in the environment. These accounts therefore become high-value targets for attackers.

In order to protect these privileged domain accounts, it is important to have a solid understanding of the various circumstances which expose domain account credentials. In this presentation, I will discuss what you can and cannot do safely with domain accounts. In particular, I will cover attacks against password hashes, security support providers, access tokens, and network authentication protocols. I will then provide a set of recommendations that you can follow to mitigate the risks and protect these privileged domain account credentials in your environment.