Active Directory Security Assessment

Deeply assess your Active Directory environment to uncover misconfigurations, privilege escalation paths, and legacy risks that attackers can exploit.

Go Beyond the Surface with Deep Domain Analysis

  • Uncover Initial Access Weaknesses

    Identify flaws, misconfigurations, and insecure defaults that can grant attackers a foothold in Active Directory from an unauthenticated starting point.

  • Uncover Privilege Escalation Paths

    Identify misconfigurations, trust abuse, and delegation flaws that lead to Domain Admin.

  • Audit AD at Key Permission Levels

    Evaluate security posture from critical vantage points, including unauthenticated, standard user, and Domain Admin, to reveal risks present at each level of access.

  • Map Trusts, ACLs, and GPOs

    Trace influence and access through complex AD relationships, including trusts and file shares.

Our Active Directory Security Assessment is designed to reveal hidden risks in the identity backbone of your enterprise. We assess all AD components including group membership, administrative access, Group Policy Objects (GPOs), access control lists (ACLs), trusts, remote access permissions, file shares, authentication mechanisms, legacy configurations, Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) implementations, and more. Our AD assessments are tailored to both on-prem and hybrid environments.

Testing is performed in three phases:

  • Unauthenticated: Test internal network exposure and initial access risks.
  • Standard User: Evaluate what a rogue employee could access or escalate to.
  • Domain Admin: Deep dive into configurations for hardening and hygiene improvements.

We enumerate users, groups, ACLs, GPOs, trusts, and other domain objects, then identify potential attack chains. Findings are prioritized with remediation guidance to help harden your AD environment against modern threats.

Assessment Benefits

  • Proactively discover exploitable misconfigurations before attackers do
  • Reduce the risk of domain compromise through privilege escalation and lateral movement
  • Expose hidden trust and ACL relationships that increase attack surface
  • Uncover legacy settings and insecure defaults that weaken security posture
  • Strengthen defenses against ransomware operators and targeted threat actors
  • Gain deeper visibility than standard penetration tests or vulnerability scans
  • Receive clear, prioritized remediation steps mapped to business impact

Ready to Uncover the Gaps in Your AD Environment?

Let Vilkas help you identify and fix the issues that leave your Active Directory vulnerable.

Active Directory Assessment — FAQ

Common questions about scope, timelines, access, impact, and deliverables.

What does an Active Directory security assessment include?▾
We review AD objects such as users, groups, and computers, ACLs, Group Policy, administrator rights/excessive privileges, trusts, delegation, Kerberos settings, etc. We also map common abuse paths used for footholds, lateral movement, and privilege escalation.
How long does an AD assessment typically take?▾
Most environments require 1–2 weeks of testing plus reporting and a live debrief. Very large or multi-forest environments may take 3–4 weeks. We size timelines during scoping based on forest/domain count and object volume.
Will testing disrupt production?▾
No. We use read-only data collection and safe validation techniques. Potentially disruptive actions are excluded or run in maintenance windows with your approval. We coordinate closely with your AD/infra team throughout.
What access is required?▾
We start from an unauthenticated standpoint. After that, standard domain user credentials are usually sufficient for enumeration. We may request a read-only account and access to domain-joined jump hosts or VPN. Depending on your scope and needs we can also dig even deeper with a Domain Admin or equivalent level account, without making any configuration changes.
What deliverables do we receive?▾
You receive an executive summary, a prioritized findings list with walkthroughs and evidence, architectural recommendations, and clear remediation guidance. Post-remediation validation is included to confirm fixes.
Can you align results to best practices and frameworks?▾
Yes. We map remediation guidance to Microsoft security baselines and relevant controls (e.g., CIS, NIST) while keeping a threat-driven focus on abuse paths.