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Introduction:
Identity has become the new battleground in cybersecurity, with threat actors increasingly targeting credentials and privilege escalation paths. Microsoft’s latest preview updates to Defender XDR represent a significant shift from reactive alerting to a unified, risk-based identity security posture management (ISPM) platform that integrates visibility across on-premises Active Directory, cloud-based Entra ID, and third-party SaaS applications.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the architecture and functionality of Microsoft Defender XDR’s new Identity Security Dashboard and Inventory.
- Learn how to operationalize the Identity Risk Score to enforce Conditional Access policies and prioritize remediation.
- Gain practical skills in querying non-human identities (NHIs) and analyzing Active Directory domain security using Microsoft Graph PowerShell and native AD tools.
You Should Know:
1. Operationalizing the Identity Security Dashboard and Inventory
The new Identity Security Dashboard provides a centralized view of your hybrid identity landscape. It is designed to summarize the security posture of identity providers, on-premises identities, SaaS identities, Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Identity Governance (IGA). To effectively utilize this, administrators must ensure data connectors are enabled in Microsoft 365 Defender.
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
This dashboard aggregates signals from various sources. To view and filter the inventory of human and non-human identities, you can leverage the underlying Microsoft Graph API, which powers the dashboard.
Connect to Microsoft Graph with the necessary scopes Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "IdentityRiskEvent.Read.All", "IdentityRiskyUser.Read.All", "Application.Read.All" Retrieve a list of service principals (Non-Human Identities) to cross-reference with the dashboard Get-MgServicePrincipal -All | Select-Object DisplayName, AppId, SignInAudience To get specific risky users as seen in the Identity Risk Score feature Get-MgRiskyUser -All
This command set allows security engineers to script the extraction of identity inventory data, enabling automated reporting on privileged accounts and orphaned service principals that might not be visible in the GUI immediately.
2. Decoding the Coverage and Maturity Page
The Coverage and Maturity page introduces a standardized maturity model: Connected, Protected, Fortified, and Resilient. This is not merely a visual metric but a structured workflow to guide security teams through progressive hardening. It prioritizes setup tasks based on the current integration level of your hybrid infrastructure.
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
This feature evaluates your current configuration against Microsoft’s best practices. To manually validate the “Fortified” level status for on-premises AD, you must ensure specific features like Azure AD Connect Health and PAM are configured correctly.
– Step 1: Navigate to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal -> Identity Security -> Coverage & Maturity.
– Step 2: Identify the “Fortified” prerequisites. Often, this requires enabling Microsoft Defender for Identity sensors on your domain controllers.
– Step 3: For Linux-based domain controllers or infrastructure that interacts with AD, ensure the Defender for Identity sensor is compatible. Use the following command on a Linux server joined to the domain to verify connectivity:
Verify connectivity to the Defender for Identity cloud service telnet <your-workspace>.atp.azure.com 443 Check if the domain is resolvable correctly nslookup domain_controller_fqdn
3. Hardening Non-Human Identities (NHIs)
Non-Human Identities (NHIs), such as service accounts and application registrations, are often the weakest link. The new inventory section explicitly categorizes Microsoft Entra ID apps, Active Directory service accounts, Google Workspace apps, and Salesforce apps. The primary risk stems from over-privileged credentials and stale accounts.
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
To mitigate risks associated with NHIs, security teams should automate the discovery of stale credentials and excessive permissions.
– Step 1: In the Identity Inventory, filter for “Service Accounts.”
– Step 2: For AD service accounts, use the Active Directory module to identify accounts with password never expiring:
Run on a Domain Controller or management machine with RSAT
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Search-ADAccount -PasswordNeverExpires | Where-Object { $<em>.Enabled -eq $true } | Select-Object Name, SamAccountName, DistinguishedName
– Step 3: For Entra ID applications, use Microsoft Graph PowerShell to list applications with highly privileged roles:
List applications with directory role assignments (Global Admin, etc.)
Get-MgDirectoryRole | ForEach-Object {
$role = $</em>
Get-MgDirectoryRoleMember -DirectoryRoleId $role.Id | Where-Object { $_.AdditionalProperties."@odata.type" -eq "microsoft.graph.servicePrincipal" }
}
- Utilizing the Identity Risk Score in Conditional Access
The Identity Risk Score (0-100) is a dynamic metric combining the probability of compromise (based on user behavior and threat intelligence) with the potential business impact (criticality and privileged roles). This score is ingested into Microsoft Entra ID, allowing for automated remediation.
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
To operationalize this, you must integrate the risk score into Conditional Access policies to force password changes or block access.
– Step 1: Navigate to Microsoft Entra Admin Center -> Protection -> Conditional Access.
– Step 2: Create a new policy.
– Step 3: Under Assignments -> Users, select “All users” (or target groups).
– Step 4: Under Access controls -> Grant, select “Require multifactor authentication” and “Require password change.”
– Step 5: Under Conditions (or Session depending on licensing), select “Risk levels” and set “High” risk for the grant controls.
– Step 6: Monitor the policy using the Identity Risk Score dashboard. To programmatically fetch the risk score for a specific user, use the Graph API:
Using Azure CLI to get user risk detection details az rest --method GET --url "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/identityProtection/riskyUsers?`$filter=riskLevel eq 'high'"
5. Active Directory Domain Investigation and Hardening
The new Domain investigation page is a critical addition for hybrid environments. It breaks down domain properties, deployment health, service account breakdown, sensitive entities, and trust relationships. This feature helps identify misconfigurations like weak Kerberos encryption or insecure trust relationships that attackers often exploit (e.g., SIDHistory attacks).
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
This page correlates data from Microsoft Defender for Identity and Active Directory. To verify the recommendations from the dashboard manually, use native AD tools.
– Step 1: To check for sensitive entities (like Enterprise Admins) that should not be present in non-root domains, use PowerShell:
List all users in the Enterprise Admins group Get-ADGroupMember "Enterprise Admins" | Select-Object name, objectClass, distinguishedName
– Step 2: To audit trust relationships for potential lateral movement paths:
View all domain trusts Get-ADTrust -Filter | Select-Object Name, Direction, TrustType, TrustAttributes
– Step 3: Ensure SIDHistory is cleared for migrated accounts. Use ADSI Edit or PowerShell to query for non-null SIDHistory attributes, which is a common IOC for privilege escalation attacks.
6. Implementing Identity Security Recommendations
The platform provides actionable recommendations for Active Directory, Entra ID, SaaS apps, and non-Microsoft IdPs. These are not generic alerts but specific configuration changes. For Linux administrators managing integrations with Entra ID (e.g., using SSSD or Azure AD Kerberos), compliance with these recommendations ensures that Linux-based workloads are not introducing misconfigurations.
Step‑by‑step guide explaining what this does and how to use it.
– Step 1: In the Defender XDR portal, go to Identity Security -> Recommendations.
– Step 2: Sort by “Impact” or “Effort.” A common recommendation is “Enable Active Directory protection features” or “Secure service accounts.”
– Step 3: For Linux servers using SSSD to authenticate against Active Directory, ensure the configuration aligns with security recommendations (e.g., forcing TLS encryption):
Check /etc/sssd/sssd.conf for security settings sudo cat /etc/sssd/sssd.conf | grep ldap_id_use_start_tls If not present or set to false, edit the file to add: ldap_id_use_start_tls = true
– Step 4: For Kubernetes environments using Entra ID for authentication (non-human identities), ensure that the OIDC configurations are using the correct issuer URLs and are not vulnerable to token replay, as monitored by the “NonHumanIdentities” inventory.
What Undercode Say:
- Key Takeaway 1: The convergence of on-prem AD tools, cloud identity (Entra ID), and third-party SaaS visibility within a single XDR dashboard is the new standard for enterprise security operations centers (SOCs).
- Key Takeaway 2: Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are now treated as first-class security principals, acknowledging that service accounts and application permissions often present higher risk than human user accounts due to automation and legacy configurations.
Prediction:
The shift toward identity-based risk scoring will accelerate the deprecation of traditional perimeter-based security models. As Microsoft integrates these Defender XDR capabilities deeper into Entra ID Conditional Access, we will see a rise in automated identity quarantine mechanisms that operate without human intervention, effectively reducing the dwell time of compromised accounts from weeks to minutes. Organizations that fail to adopt these integrated identity security posture management tools will struggle to maintain visibility across their increasingly complex hybrid and multi-cloud estates, making them prime targets for identity-based attacks.
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Reported By: Markolauren Identity – Hackers Feeds
Extra Hub: Undercode MoN
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