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Downtime Is Dangerous: Why Identity Resilience is Now Mission-Critical for Healthcare

Beyond Access: How Healthcare IT Can Cut Costs, Shrink Attack Surfaces, and Protect Patient Data with Smart Automation

In healthcare, behind every login is a nurse, a physician, and—most importantly—a patient in need. When identity systems fail, care delivery comes to a halt. That reality has been underscored by recent breaches, where stolen credentials, dormant admin accounts, and lateral movement across hybrid systems have caused not just IT outages, but also treatment delays, patient diversions, and canceled surgeries.

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Protecting Active Directory Against Pass-the-Hash Attacks

TL;DR Pass-the-Hash attacks allow cybercriminals to steal hashed credentials and impersonate legitimate users in Active Directory environments without ever knowing actual passwords, enabling them to move laterally through networks and escalate privileges. This article explains how Pass-the-Hash exploits work, how to detect suspicious activity, and provides essential strategies to protect

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Cayosoft joins the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association

Enhanced Windows LAPS Password View and Management

Introduction  In our commitment to provide robust Active Directory, Entra ID, and M365 security, monitoring, and recovery Cayosoft Guardian is rolling out new features designed to make your security processes more streamlined and secure. With the latest update, we’re introducing modern LAPS management capabilities directly in the product.  Feature Highlights 

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Enhanced Security and Deployment with gMSA and AD Connector

In our commitment to provide robust Active Directory, Entra ID, and M365 security, monitoring, and recovery Cayosoft Guardian is rolling out new features designed to make your security processes more streamlined and secure. With the latest update, we’re introducing Group Managed Service Account (gMSA) integration and the AD Connector feature,

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Active Directory Security Best Practices: Key NSA Guidelines

Most global businesses run hybrid AD environments, and following active directory security best practices is critical when combining on-premises and cloud services to secure both Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). Both systems manage identity and access control, making them prime targets for attackers aiming to

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K-12 Ransomware Protection: Securing Schools’ AD & Entra ID

As K-12 schools increasingly rely on digital services and key infrastructure such as Active Directory and Entra ID for authentication and access to support education services. We continue to see an increase with being targeted by Ransomware groups and falling victim to ransomware attacks, putting sensitive data and education services

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How to Protect Active Directory from a Kerberoasting Attack

Active Directory (AD) is the beating heart of many organizations’ IT infrastructures, managing user accounts, permissions, and access to critical resources. However, beneath its seemingly impenetrable exterior lies a vulnerability that attackers are increasingly exploiting: the Kerberoasting attack. Let’s take a look at this threat, understand its mechanics, and uncover

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Qilin Ransomware: How to Detect & Protect Against This Exploit

Qilin ransomware has emerged as a significant threat to organizations, particularly those relying heavily on Active Directory for managing their IT infrastructure. Qilin ransomware has adopted a new method for stealing credentials from Google Chrome browsers by leveraging Active Directory Group Policy. In this guide, we will explore how Qilin

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FSMO Roles: The Hidden Key to Resilient Active Directory

At the heart of every well-functioning Active Directory (AD) environment lies a set of unsung heroes: Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) roles. These specialized roles hold the keys to your AD’s resilience, stability, and recoverability. While they may not be the most glamorous aspect of AD management, understanding and safeguarding

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Golden Ticket Attack: How To Protect Your Active Directory

Among all cybersecurity threats, only a few attacks are as insidious and potentially damaging as the Golden Ticket attack. Unlike ransomware or brute-force hacking, which often leave visible traces, the Golden Ticket attack operates under the radar, giving hackers a secret passage into the heart of a company’s most valuable

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Mastering Microsoft 365 Governance: Active Directory Guide

In most Microsoft 365 environments, Active Directory (AD) is a key component for managing user identities and access, controlling who accesses what and how. However, as your organization grows, so do the complexities and risks associated with AD management. An improperly managed AD setup can lead to devastating security breaches,

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Forest Recovery in Active Directory: Are You Prepared?

Active Directory (AD) is the backbone of most enterprise IT environments, serving as the central repository for user identities, access permissions, and system configurations. As organizations grow and evolve, their AD infrastructures often expand into multiple domains within a single forest, and/or multiple forests with multiple domains, creating a complex

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Managing Active Directory in a Zero Trust World

Applying a Zero Trust strategy to Active Directory management reduces your identity threat landscape, enhances access controls and segmentation, enforces just-in-time access, and improves monitoring and incident response. Overall, this approach strengthens your identity platform and makes it more resilient. In this blog, learn how Zero Trust strategy and principles

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What is Mimikatz? A Security Guide for Organizations

Imagine a cyberattack that doesn’t rely on brute force or zero-day exploits, instead silently slipping past your defenses and targeting the very heart of your network security: user credentials. This is the reality of Mimikatz, a post-exploitation tool that has become a favorite weapon among cybercriminals. What Is Mimikatz? It’s

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NTLM Relay Attack Prevention: A Checklist for Active Directory Security

NT LAN Manager (NTLM) relay attacks represent a persistent threat to organizations that rely on Active Directory (AD) for identity management and access control. These attacks exploit weaknesses in the NTLM authentication protocol, allowing attackers to impersonate legitimate users and gain unauthorized access to sensitive resources within the AD environment.

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Securing Active Directory Against DCSync Attacks

DCSync attacks remain a persistent threat to Active Directory (AD) security. These attacks cleverly exploit normal AD replication processes, allowing hackers to secretly extract sensitive password hashes. This access can pave the way for widespread exploits across your network. Given the prevalence of DCSync attacks, IT professionals must be equipped

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Cayosoft-Enhanced Defense: Securing Active Directory in 2024

Active Directory (AD) remains a backbone of IT systems for many organizations, managing access and permissions for users and devices. But its frequent use made it a top target for cyberattacks. Attackers are getting smarter, finding ways to misuse AD’s features to gain control, spread through networks, and steal valuable

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Surviving LockBit: How to Protect Your Organization

LockBit ransomware attacks are on the rise and pose a major threat to organizations of all sizes. In 2022 alone, LockBit is estimated to have been responsible for 44% of all known incidents. This ransomware’s primary goal is to quickly gain full control of an environment to demand money from

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Active Directory Best Practices for Management in 2024

In 2024, effective Active Directory (AD) management is more critical than ever. With escalating cyber threats and complex network environments, businesses must prioritize keeping their AD secure and streamlined. The shift towards automation and security-focused strategies aligned with Active Directory best practices is essential. Here’s the alarming fact: 82% of

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Top 4 Security Measures Against Silver Ticket Attacks

Silver Ticket Attacks | Protecting Your Active Directory From Cyber Threats Silver ticket attacks are a type of cyberattack that exploits weaknesses in the Kerberos authentication protocol, which is used for secure logins within Active Directory (AD). By stealing a service account’s login information, attackers can create fake access passes

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Securing SYSVOL: Threats, Protection, and Recovery

What is SYSVOL and Why is it Important? For many IT professionals, the system volume (SYSVOL) might seem like just another shared folder. However, if not properly protected, it represents a critical security vulnerability within every Active Directory domain controller. SYSVOL stores the essential files and scripts that govern user

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Active Directory Software: Top 7 Enterprise Requirements

Understanding the Complexities of Enterprise IT Security The Microsoft Digital Defense Report reveals a concerning trend: 93% of Microsoft’s ransomware incident response engagements uncovered insufficient controls on privilege access and lateral movement. This illustrates that companies need to strengthen their user management and security in 2024. The growing trend underlines

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Active Directory Authentication Explained

Getting Smart with Active Directory Authentication Let’s talk about Active Directory authentication, a key player in your IT environment’s security. In simple terms, it’s like the main gatekeeper of your organization’s IT environment, deciding who gets in and what they can do. This isn’t just about keeping bad guys out,

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Active Directory Cleanup: Top 8 Best Practices

Top Best Practices for Optimal Performance | Active Directory Cleanup Active Directory plays a key role in IT infrastructure, managing user identities and protecting network resources. However, it can often collect excess data, creating what we can call digital clutter. An organized approach to cleaning up Active Directory is crucial

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Active Directory Schema: Essentials & Backup Strategy

Understanding Active Directory Schema Before we dive into the backup, let’s clear up what an Active Directory schema is. Simply put, the Active Directory schema is a set of definitions that outline what kinds of objects and information about those objects can be stored in Active Directory. Think of it

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Why You Need to Recover Active Directory Forest

Essential Considerations to Recover Your Active Directory Forest Active Directory isn’t just a part of your IT infrastructure, it’s the forgotten central hub that keeps everything running smoothly. But with great power comes great responsibility – and vulnerability. It’s a primary target for attackers and any disruption will send ripple

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Enhancing IT Agility with Automated User Provisioning in Active Directory

Understanding Automated User Provisioning in Active Directory In the world of IT, manual management of user provisioning and deprovisioning feels as outdated as a floppy disk. Just imagine trying to juggle countless user profiles across diverse on-premise and cloud environments—it’s a logistical nightmare. Enter the era of automated user provisioning

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Selecting the Right Tools to Manage Active Directory in 2024

How to Choose the Best Tools to Manage Active Directory In the changing world of IT management, choosing the right tools to manage Active Directory is very important. Active Directory is the main system for managing identities and access in your organization. It needs a strong solution that simplifies operations,

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Is it Time for your Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Renewal?

Resources to Optimize Microsoft 365 (Formerly Office 365) License Management and Reduce Costs For organizations with 500 or more users or devices, that want a more manageable volume licensing program, the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) provides the ability to buy cloud services and software licenses under one agreement. These enterprise agreements are

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Azure AD Connect: New Update

New Azure AD Connect Version 2.0.91.0 Released This week, Microsoft released an updated version of Azure AD Connect. This new version provides compliance of the Azure AD Connect Health component with the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) requirements. Keep track and understand all the versions that have been released —

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‘Wormable’ Flaw Leads January 2022 Patch Tuesday

Microsoft Releases Over 100 Updates in Patch Tuesday for January 2022 The January security updates from the Redmond-based software giant cover security defects in a wide range of default Windows OS components, including a critical flaw in the HTTP Protocol Stack (http.sys) that Microsoft describes as “wormable,” and another code

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Zoho ManageEngine Zero Day Flaw Active Exploit

ManageEngine Zero-Day Flaw Actively Being Exploited

FBI Warns: APT Groups Exploiting Critical Vulnerability in ManageEngine Software Earlier this month, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint advisory highlighting a newly discovered vulnerability being actively exploited in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, owned by Zoho Corp, an IT help desk and asset management software.

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Security Flaw Found in ManageEngine

FBI & CISA Warning: ManageEngine Flaw Poses Serious Risk

APT Actors Exploit Vulnerability in ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus Reports confirm a critical security vulnerability in ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus, a self-service password management and single sign-on (SSO) tool for Active Directory environments, is actively being exploited. This newly discovered vulnerability, CVE-2021-40539, presents a critical authentication bypass risk that affects REST API

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Fortinet VPN Password Leak

Credentials for Nearly 500,000 Fortinet VPN Users Leaked

Hackers Leak Passwords for Fortinet VPN Servers A list with nearly half a million Fortinet VPN user credentials, allegedly scraped from unprotected devices, is now being shared on hacker forums across the dark web. On Tuesday, a threat actor known as “Orange”, thought to be a member of the popular

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Microsoft Zero-Day Exploit Vulnerability RCE MSHTML

New Microsoft Vulnerability, MSHTML RCE, Under Active Attack

Microsoft Alerts of New Zero-Day Flaw in Windows Microsoft released a security alert yesterday announcing a newly discovered flaw for a remote code execution (RCE) in MSHTML that is currently being exploited. MSHTML, also known as Trident, is a component used as a browser rendering engine for Microsoft Office documents.

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New Pricing for Microsoft 365

New Commercial List Pricing for Office 365 Microsoft announced changes to their commercial pricing for Microsoft 365—the first substantive pricing update since the launch of Office 365 a decade ago. Microsoft says that this updated pricing reflects the increased value they have delivered to their customers over the past 10

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SysAdmin Appreciation Day

Thank Your SysAdmins – It’s System Administrator Appreciation Day!

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day! System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as SysAdmin Day, is an event created by System Administrator, Ted Kekatos. It all started when Kekatos saw a magazine advertisement in which a System Administrator was presented with flowers and fruit-baskets by grateful co-workers as thanks for installing

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Windows PrintNightmare Vulnerability

3rd Windows Print Spooler Critical Vulnerability Detected

Windows PrintNightmare Vulnerabilities & Exploits Continue At the end of June and earlier this month, Microsoft released a security update regarding a Windows Print Spooler critical vulnerability, now being called PrintNightmare. Their original guidance, CVE-2021-1675, was quickly met with backlash as patches released by Microsoft were reported to not fix

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Microsoft discovers new SolarWinds Vulnerability

Microsoft Discovers New SolarWinds Flaw Under Attack

Microsoft Uncovers Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability & Zero-Day Exploit of SolarWinds Serv-U Product Microsoft recently alerted software company, SolarWinds, of a new vulnerability uncovered, providing proof of concept to the company last week. It was found in SolarWinds Serv-U product, in two IT management utilities used to manage remote

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Latest Ransomware attack targets Kaseya

Thousands, Possibly Millions, of Businesses Affected by Latest Ransomware Attack

Kaseya Platform Targeted in Large-Scale Global Ransomware Attack Over the holiday weekend, notorious cybercrime group, REvil, successfully launched a ransomware attack targeting Managed Service Providers (MSPs). This unprecedented hack triggered an infection chain compromising a massive, global supply chain, with reports showing at least 1,000 businesses over 17 countries being

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