Guide

How to Secure Active Directory Against Privilege Escalation

Reduce hidden administrative access, protect privileged identities and prevent limited access from becoming control of Active Directory.

Introduction

Privilege escalation occurs when a user, service or attacker gains more authority than intended. In Active Directory, that may mean progressing from an ordinary account to control of a privileged group, domain controller, Group Policy Object or identity-management system.

The route is not always a direct addition to Domain Admins. Escalation can exploit nested groups, delegated permissions, service accounts, poorly protected administrative workstations, Group Policy control or access to systems that manage Active Directory. An identity may therefore be capable of gaining extensive control without initially appearing privileged.

Securing Active Directory requires these routes to be identified, reduced and monitored. This guide provides a practical framework for limiting standing privilege, protecting administrative identities and preventing a compromise at one level from spreading into the identity infrastructure.

What Is Privilege Escalation in Active Directory?

Privilege escalation is the acquisition or misuse of permissions that allow an identity to perform actions beyond its approved role.

Common examples include:

  • A standard user gaining membership of a privileged group
  • A helpdesk account resetting the password of an administrator
  • A delegated administrator changing the permissions on a sensitive organisational unit
  • A service account being used to access systems beyond its intended application
  • An identity modifying a Group Policy Object applied to domain controllers
  • An administrator exposing privileged credentials on a less trusted workstation or server
  • An operator taking control of a backup, virtualisation or management platform that can influence domain controllers

Some routes provide immediate elevated access. Others create a control path through which an identity can grant itself privilege, take ownership of a protected object or compromise an existing administrator.

Before You Begin

Privilege reduction can affect essential administrative work and service dependencies. Before making changes:

  • Confirm that current Active Directory backups are usable and protected
  • Document the accounts, groups and systems considered privileged
  • Identify named business and technical owners
  • Test discovery scripts and policy changes outside production where possible
  • Define approval, rollback and verification steps
  • Avoid using the privileged identity being reviewed for routine browsing or email
Important: The PowerShell examples in this guide are read-only. Do not automatically remove group membership, disable accounts or change permissions based solely on discovery output. Validate ownership and dependencies before making production changes.

1. Identify Existing Privilege and Escalation Paths

You cannot secure privilege that has not been identified. Begin by inventorying the obvious administrative groups, then widen the assessment to nested membership, delegation, service identities and control of critical systems.

Microsoft identifies Enterprise Admins, Domain Admins, the built-in Administrators group and Schema Admins as the highest-privilege built-in Active Directory groups. Other built-in, product-created and custom groups may also hold powerful rights.

The following example collects direct and recursive membership for a defined set of administrative groups:

PowerShell 

$PrivilegedGroups = @(
    "Domain Admins",
    "Administrators",
    "Enterprise Admins",
    "Schema Admins",
    "Account Operators",
    "Backup Operators",
    "Server Operators",
    "Group Policy Creator Owners",
    "DNSAdmins"
)

$Results = foreach ($GroupName in $PrivilegedGroups) {
    try {
        $Group = Get-ADGroup -Identity $GroupName -ErrorAction Stop

        Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $Group -Recursive |
        Select-Object @{Name="PrivilegedGroup";Expression={$Group.Name}},
                      Name, SamAccountName, ObjectClass,
                      DistinguishedName
    }
    catch {
        Write-Warning "Could not query ${GroupName}: $($_.Exception.Message)"
    }
}

$Results |
Sort-Object PrivilegedGroup, SamAccountName |
Export-Csv ".\Privileged-Group-Members.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Enterprise Admins and Schema Admins exist in the forest root domain. Run the review in the appropriate domain context and extend the list with administrative groups created by applications, management platforms and your own organisation.

For a broader discovery process, including delegated permissions and protected-account indicators, follow our guide to identifying privileged accounts in Active Directory.

2. Reduce Membership of the Highest-Privilege Groups

Accounts with forest-wide or domain-wide authority should not be used for ordinary administration. Keep the membership of the highest-privilege groups as small as operationally possible and use temporary membership where your controls support it.

For each member, establish:

  • The named owner and administrative purpose
  • Whether access is direct or inherited through a nested group
  • The tasks that genuinely require this level of authority
  • Whether a narrower delegated role could perform those tasks
  • Whether access needs to be permanent
  • When the membership was approved and last reviewed

Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins should normally be empty except when specific forest-level work is being performed. Domain Admin membership should also be tightly restricted. Routine user, group, server or application administration should use defined roles with only the required scope.

Do not remove a nested group without understanding every account and service that receives access through it. Use the companion guide to review privileged group membership to retain membership paths, ownership decisions and comparison evidence.

3. Separate Administrative and Everyday Identities

An administrator’s normal account is exposed to email, web content, collaboration tools and other everyday activity. If that same identity holds powerful Active Directory rights, a compromise of ordinary user activity can become an identity-infrastructure compromise.

Use separate identities for distinct levels of administration:

  • An everyday account for email, browsing and productivity work
  • A controlled account for workstation or service administration
  • A separate, highly protected identity for domain and identity-infrastructure administration

Privileged accounts should be prevented from signing in to inappropriate systems wherever practical. They should not be used for email or general internet access, and their authentication should be restricted to approved administrative devices and interfaces.

Account separation must be supported by operational discipline. Creating a second account does not improve security if its credentials are entered on the same exposed workstation or reused across trust levels.

4. Use Secure Administrative Devices

Privileged credentials are only as secure as the device and session in which they are used. A compromised workstation can capture credentials, tokens or administrative actions even when the account itself is well configured.

Use dedicated, hardened administrative devices or privileged access workstations for sensitive tasks. These should:

  • Be managed to a higher security standard than ordinary endpoints
  • Restrict internet access, email and unapproved software
  • Permit sign-in only by authorised administrative identities
  • Use strong authentication appropriate to the environment
  • Receive security updates and endpoint protection promptly
  • Prevent lower-trust accounts from administering or modifying the device
  • Generate logs that can be monitored independently

Microsoft’s Enterprise Access Model succeeds the older tier model and focuses on protecting control-plane identities, devices and interfaces from lower-trust systems. The practical principle remains clear: credentials capable of controlling Active Directory should not be exposed on ordinary workstations, application servers or other less trusted assets.

The article Why Tiering Models Fail in Practice explains why separation fails when it is treated as a diagram rather than an enforced operating model.

5. Replace Broad Rights with Controlled Delegation

Active Directory supports granular delegation so operational teams can perform defined tasks without broad administrative membership. Use this to replace standing Domain Admin access for activities such as:

  • Resetting passwords for a defined population
  • Creating or updating users in selected organisational units
  • Managing membership of approved business groups
  • Joining computers to a controlled part of the directory
  • Administering a specific application or service

Delegation must itself be reviewed. Permissions such as GenericAll, GenericWrite, WriteDacl, WriteOwner, password reset and group-membership modification can create escalation paths when applied to sensitive objects.

For each delegated role, document:

  • The tasks it permits
  • The users, groups and organisational units in scope
  • The identities allowed to receive the role
  • The owner and approval authority
  • The expected review frequency
  • The logging and alerting applied to its use

Avoid granting permissions reactively to individual users. Role-based groups with defined scope are easier to understand, certify and remove. See Delegating Active Directory Administration Without Losing Control for the governance principles behind a sustainable delegation model.

6. Protect Privileged Groups from Indirect Control

Reviewing the members of a privileged group is not enough. An identity may be able to alter the group, reset a member’s password, change its owner or modify its access control list without already belonging to it.

Assess:

  • Who can add or remove group members
  • Who owns the group
  • Which permissions are inherited
  • Whether another group can modify it
  • Who can reset or take control of its member accounts
  • Whether synchronisation or identity-management platforms can change its membership

Apply change monitoring to the highest-impact groups and investigate unexpected additions immediately. A quarterly certification may identify excessive access eventually; it is not a substitute for timely detection of a privileged membership change.

7. Secure Service and Automation Accounts

Service accounts are common escalation targets because they may combine long-lived credentials, powerful permissions and limited human oversight. They are also frequently excluded from normal joiner, mover and leaver processes.

The following read-only query provides a starting point for finding enabled user accounts with service principal names:

PowerShell 

Get-ADUser -LDAPFilter "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(servicePrincipalName=*))" `
    -Properties ServicePrincipalName, Enabled, PasswordNeverExpires,
                PasswordLastSet, LastLogonDate |
Select-Object Name, SamAccountName, Enabled, PasswordNeverExpires,
              PasswordLastSet, LastLogonDate,
              @{Name="SPNs";Expression={$_.ServicePrincipalName -join "; "}}

This is not a complete service-account inventory. Accounts used only by scheduled tasks, scripts, application pools or integrations may not have a service principal name. Combine directory discovery with configuration data from servers, applications and automation platforms.

For every service identity:

  • Assign a named technical and business owner
  • Document the service, hosts and dependencies
  • Remove interactive sign-in where it is not required
  • Grant only the permissions needed by the service
  • Avoid membership of the highest-privilege groups
  • Protect and rotate credentials
  • Review delegation settings and service principal names
  • Replace conventional user-based service accounts with managed service accounts where supported

Group Managed Service Accounts allow Windows to manage complex passwords automatically and can support services running across multiple authorised hosts. Their use still requires careful control over which computers and administrators can retrieve and use the managed credential.

8. Protect Group Policy and Other Control Systems

Group Policy can configure users and computers, deploy software, run scripts and change security settings. An identity able to edit or link an influential Group Policy Object may be able to gain control of every system within its scope.

Review:

  • Membership of Group Policy Creator Owners
  • Owners and permissions on sensitive Group Policy Objects
  • Who can link policies to domain-controller and administrative organisational units
  • Who can modify scripts, installers or files referenced by policy
  • Whether changes to important policies are monitored and approved

Apply the same principle to systems capable of influencing Active Directory or domain controllers. Virtualisation administrators, backup operators, endpoint-management platforms, remote-management tools and identity-automation systems may form part of the control plane even when their accounts are not members of Domain Admins.

9. Monitor Privileged Changes and Administrative Activity

Preventative controls reduce opportunity, but monitoring is still required to detect misuse, configuration drift and attempted escalation.

Important Windows security events include:

  • 4728 and 4729 — member added to or removed from a security-enabled global group
  • 4732 and 4733 — member added to or removed from a security-enabled domain local group
  • 4756 and 4757 — member added to or removed from a security-enabled universal group
  • 5136 — a directory service object was modified
  • 4672 — special privileges were assigned to a new logon

These events require the appropriate audit policies and, for some directory changes, suitable object auditing to be configured. Collect relevant logs from every domain controller, protect them from alteration and retain them long enough to support investigations and compliance requirements.

Prioritise alerts for:

  • Changes to highest-privilege group membership
  • Creation or enabling of privileged accounts
  • Changes to delegation on sensitive objects
  • Modifications to domain-controller policies
  • Use of privileged identities from unexpected devices
  • Administrative activity outside approved change windows
  • Attempts to weaken logging, protection or authentication controls

Our guide to auditing Active Directory changes explains how native auditing and specialist monitoring approaches fit together.

10. Introduce Approval-Based and Time-Limited Access

Permanent membership creates standing opportunity for misuse and credential theft. Where practical, provide privileged access only when an approved task requires it.

A controlled process should include:

  • A defined role and permitted scope
  • A recorded request and business reason
  • Approval by an accountable owner
  • Strong verification of the requesting administrator
  • Automatic activation and expiry
  • Logging of the session or administrative actions
  • Review of exceptions and failed activations

Time limitation does not make inappropriate access safe. The role must still provide only the authority required, and the device and session used to exercise it must be protected.

11. Protect Active Directory Recovery

Privilege escalation can be used to alter or destroy directory objects, policies and recovery mechanisms. A secure Active Directory programme must assume that preventative controls can fail.

Ensure that:

  • System State or supported Active Directory backups are taken regularly
  • Backup storage and administration are isolated from ordinary domain compromise
  • Directory Services Restore Mode credentials are protected and governed
  • Object-level and forest-recovery procedures are documented
  • Recovery is tested rather than assumed
  • Emergency access identities are tightly controlled and monitored
  • Recovery decisions, dependencies and responsibilities have named owners

An attacker with domain-wide control may also target backups and recovery tooling. Treat the people, platforms and credentials capable of restoring the directory as privileged components of the identity control plane.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Focusing Only on Domain Admins

Domain Admin membership is important, but delegated rights, nested groups, Group Policy control and management infrastructure can provide equally serious escalation routes.

Creating Separate Admin Accounts but Reusing the Same Device

Account separation is weakened when privileged credentials are entered on an everyday workstation exposed to email, browsing and ordinary software.

Implementing a Tier Model Only on Paper

Administrative boundaries must be enforced through sign-in restrictions, device controls, delegation and monitoring. Naming accounts “Tier 0” does not protect their credentials.

Ignoring Service Accounts

Service identities can retain powerful access for years. Excluding them because remediation is difficult leaves a persistent and poorly governed escalation path.

Removing Access Without Understanding Dependencies

Broad privilege should be reduced, but an unplanned change can interrupt critical services. Establish ownership, test the change and retain a controlled rollback route.

Collecting Logs Without Acting on Them

Audit data has limited value if high-risk changes are not alerted, investigated and linked to an approved request.

Treating Hardening as a One-Off Project

New systems, administrators, services and exceptions continually change the privilege model. Discovery, certification and monitoring must be repeated.

Build a Repeatable Privileged Access Programme

A sustainable approach combines technical controls with accountable governance:

  1. Define the identities, devices, systems and interfaces that form the Active Directory control plane.
  2. Discover direct, nested, delegated and indirect privilege paths.
  3. Reduce membership of the highest-privilege groups.
  4. Separate administrative identities and restrict where they can be used.
  5. Replace broad authority with scoped delegation.
  6. Secure service accounts and control systems.
  7. Introduce approval-based and time-limited access where appropriate.
  8. Monitor privileged changes and investigate deviations.
  9. Certify access regularly with named owners.
  10. Test recovery and update the model as the environment changes.

Prioritise the controls that break the most dangerous escalation paths first. In many environments, immediate gains come from reducing standing Domain Admin membership, separating privileged accounts, protecting administrative devices and monitoring changes to sensitive groups.

Operational Limitations of Manual Control

Native tools, PowerShell and documented procedures can establish a strong foundation. However, manual control becomes difficult as the number of domains, administrators, applications and privileged roles grows.

Common challenges include:

  • Combining group membership, delegated permissions and system-level control paths
  • Maintaining accurate ownership and approval records
  • Enforcing administrative boundaries consistently
  • Providing time-limited access without service-desk delay
  • Rotating and protecting privileged credentials
  • Reviewing large volumes of administrative activity
  • Comparing current privilege with an approved baseline
  • Coordinating remediation without disrupting services

Automating Privileged Access Control

Privileged Access Management, Access Governance & Permissions Management and Active Directory Management platforms address different parts of the problem.

  • Adaxes supports controlled delegation, approval workflows, policy-based automation and reporting for Active Directory administration.
  • WALLIX PAM centralises control and oversight of privileged credentials and administrative sessions.
  • Netwrix Privilege Secure helps restrict, monitor and record privileged administrative access.

The appropriate combination depends on whether the principal gap is directory delegation, access governance, credential control, session oversight or detection. Technology should enforce an agreed privilege model rather than substitute for ownership and policy.

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Final Thoughts

Securing Active Directory against privilege escalation requires more than reducing the visible membership of Domain Admins.

Organisations must understand how administrative control is inherited, delegated and exercised across accounts, devices and management systems. Standing privilege should be reduced, sensitive credentials should be confined to protected administrative paths, and changes to the control plane should be monitored continuously.

By combining discovery, least-privilege delegation, secured administration, time-limited access and tested recovery, organisations can make it substantially harder for a compromised identity to become a domain-wide incident.

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