Cyber Defense Magazine Special Annual Edition for RSA Conference 2021

The downside of this approach is that reviewing logs can be very time-consuming to get right, and many
SOC and SIEM instances do not ingest Active Directory and domain controller logsnatively. These tools
are also prone to generating false alerts that noisy and tend to mute out the important ones. Perhaps the
biggest challenge is that these tools are reactive and don’t proactively identify AD vulnerabilities that
create risks related to credentials or domain access from endpoints. They are also not designed for live
attack detection and will typically surface issues well after the event happens. This after-the-fact
detection is similar to alerting on a car crash after it’s happened, which is, of course, not very
helpful except for recovery efforts. Viewing logs can also miss critical attacks like password
spraying, DCSync, DCshadow, and Golden ticket or silver ticket attacks.
Attivo Networks has led the industry in providing efficient and accurate threat detection for credential
theft and lateral movement activity. The company has continued to lead in innovation around credential
and Active Directory protection. These include new ways to conceal credentials and AD objects from
attackers, reveal attack paths, and deliver automated methods to find vulnerabilities in AD that create risk
or demonstrate that a live attack is underway.
In 2020, Attivo announced ADSecure that hides AD objects from attackers. In 2021, the
company announced ADAssessor, which automatically completes over
200 exposure checks, identifies over 70 vulnerabilities, and continuously detects over 10 critical live
attacks. These products create an unprecedented level of visibility and attack prevention that has simply
not been seen in the market before. Some of the quotes from our early adopters include:
“When I found out about this, I was pretty shocked and a bit skeptical, but very excited with the outcome
that, Hey, this actually solves a problem that I’ve been, been looking at for years and years and years.” –
VP Information Security & IT Risk, Real Estate Equities Firm
“I haven’t seen a tool yet that provides this level of visibility in a way that’s so usable.” – VP Information
Security & IT Risk, Real Estate Equities Firm
“We say that ADAssessor should be something everybody does because Active Directory is just so
commonly abused by attackers.” – – VP Information Security & IT Risk, Real Estate Equities Firm
“ADAssessor provides a necessary and critical visibility into directory services and is a key component
to provide identity and directory assurance.” - CISO, Large Food Retailer
“A tool like ADAssessor is very great for understanding what are those hygiene changes that need to
occur that I think you’ll see used for spotting changes.” - VP of IT infrastructure, Data Intelligence Firm
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