Michael Reinders

Audit your Active Directory environment to ensure the security of your company’s most valuable assets. Here are the top 10 events to audit in Active Directory to identify risks. Why audit Active Directory? Active Directory provides authentication, account management, and authorization services that are critical for strong access governance. To quickly detect insider threats, organizations should audit the creation of new accounts and security groups, and…

How familiar are you with Windows Server Backup? You may be surprised by its value in your organization. I’ll explain what its main purpose is and how to use it to back up an Active Directory domain controller and fileservers. What is Windows Server Backup? Windows Server has had a built-in backup application since Windows…

Azure Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) cloud service. Azure AD is generally seen as a move from on-premises IAM to the cloud. Learn more about Azure AD here. What is Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Entra ID)? Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD, AAD, Entra ID, etc.) is a cloud…

Windows allows users to assign permissions to files and folders, for added security and to control which users can perform specific actions on files and folders. Learn all you need to know about basic permissions, folder permissions, user permissions, explicit permissions, and much more. What are NTFS permissions? NTFS permissions, first introduced with Microsoft Windows…

Exchange Online PowerShell is a command-line tool that allows you to manage your Exchange Online mailboxes and users. It can be used to perform a variety of tasks, such as creating and managing mailboxes, configuring mail flow rules, and managing user permissions. In this guide, we’ll show you how to install and connect to Exchange…

Active Directory is Microsoft’s on-premises identity and access management (IAM) service. In this article, learn how Active Directory (AD) makes it easier for IT to manage an organization’s IT resources. Active Directory is especially useful for companies that have to manage lots of endpoints and servers. What is Active Directory and why is it used?…

PsExec is a command-line utility program for Windows written by none other than Mark Russinovich, the current CTO of Microsoft Azure. It’s still being updated as part of the SysInternals suite of utilities. PsExec allows you to run programs locally, and, more importantly, on remote computers. You can even kick off similar commands on multiple…

The Get-ADComputer PowerShell cmdlet is a powerful tool for managing AD computers. It can be used to retrieve information about computer objects, search for computer objects based on specific criteria, and perform various actions on computer objects. What is Get-ADComputer used for? Get-ADComputer is a PowerShell cmdlet that retrieves one or more computers from Active…

Advanced password attacks, like brute force and those launched by malicious insiders, are devastating the security of today’s enterprises and cloud services. ADSelfService Plus from ManageEngine can protect web properties from such attacks with multi-factor authentication (MFA). Multi-factor authentication is the best way to protect Active Directory and cloud-based user accounts As the impacts of…

The inner workings of the Windows operating system are a labyrinth of files and folders, each with its own specific role and significance. Among these, the AppData folder is a critical yet often overlooked, or possibly misunderstood component. In this article, we will delve into the AppData folder in Windows, exploring its purpose, structure, and…