In a business and IT context, there’s only one constant: change. Think of hybrid IT landscapes that keep on evolving, tens or even hundreds of systems and applications that need updates on a regular base, a growing number of temporary contractors such as freelancers and consultants, etc. Considering this pace of change, maintaining an overview of the situation has become more challenging than ever. But if you can’t see all the users across your IT environment and if you don’t know what applications and data each of those users can access, it is close to impossible to control risks and prevent threats.

Understanding the relationships between people, access and data is a crucial factor in this regard. In other words: getting to know the unknowns. In this guide, we bundled the identity controls that apply to Active Directory. Moreover, this set of controls has proven to be applicable to the majority of the organisations. In the ebook ‘How to build the perfect risk cockpit for Microsoft Active Directory’ we discussed the six steps to set up comprehensive and scalable risk cockpit.

In this guide, we’ll elaborate on the eight building blocks of such a cockpit. Implementing these controls will help you to uncover all the unknowns. Because you can’t protect what can’t see.

This guide is written for IAM, IT and security professionals. The contents are not limited to any organizational size, structure or industry. The premise is, however, that the organization uses Active Directory. Nevertheless, most of the controls also apply to other applications albeit with some adjustments.