The Windows Protection Users group is a built-in group in the Windows operating system that is used for running certain system services and processes with reduced permissions. The purpose of this group is to improve the security and stability of the operating system by restricting the access of these services and processes to system resources.
By default, members of the Windows Protection Users group have limited permissions and cannot perform certain actions that can potentially harm the system. For example, they cannot install or remove software, modify system settings, or access sensitive data.
This group is commonly used for running services such as Windows Defender Antivirus, Windows Firewall, and the Windows Update service. By using the Windows Protection Users group to run these services, Windows can ensure that they are running with the minimum necessary permissions, reducing the risk of security vulnerabilities and system crashes.
It’s worth noting that the Windows Protection Users group is not intended for end-users or administrators to be added to. Doing so can result in unintended consequences and may compromise the security and stability of the system.
Note: 1. Set up the second Duo proxy server with the same configuration.
Note 2: The second DUO proxy server can setup different host IP address which could be the second Domain Controller for redundancy.
B. Configure Palo Alto Firewall to intergrade with the two DUO Proxy servers for redundancy
Configure the Palo Alto Firewall to use both Duo proxy servers in the RADIUS profile. This ensures that if the primary Duo proxy server is down, the Palo Alto Firewall will automatically use the backup server to authenticate users.
Go to DEVICE>Server Profile>RADIUS.
Click on Add
Enter the info such as profile Name, Timeout (Note: 120 sec Is by default. We recommend reducing it to 30 sec. Otherwise, failover may not work because the GlobalProtect may be timeout before 120 sec), Radius Server IP address, Secret key which must match DUO Secret key.
Create two for redundancy.
Create two MFA server profiles
Go to the DEVICE>Authentication Profile
Click on Add
Enter the Authentication Profile information.
Click on Advanced and select the AD group for accessing Gloableprotect VPN.
Create two Authentication Profiles for redundancy.
3. Configure Authentication Sequence for redundancy
Go to DEVICE>Authentication Sequence
Click Add.
Add two Authentication Profiles you created before.
Removing Microsoft Exchange from Active Directory can be a complex process and should only be performed by someone who is familiar with the Exchange server architecture and Active Directory. Before proceeding with the removal process, it’s important to understand the potential impact on your organization and to plan accordingly.
Here are the general steps to remove Exchange from Active Directory:
Verify that all mailboxes have been moved: Before removing Exchange, all mailboxes should be moved to another email system or archived. This ensures that no email data is lost during the removal process. You can use the Exchange Management Console or Exchange Admin Center to check the mailbox status and move them to a different server.
Uninstall Exchange: To uninstall Exchange, log on to the Exchange server with an account that has administrative privileges. Open the Control Panel and select Programs and Features. From the list of installed programs, select Microsoft Exchange and click Uninstall. Follow the prompts to complete the uninstallation process.
Remove Exchange Server objects from Active Directory: Once Exchange is uninstalled, you need to remove the Exchange Server objects from Active Directory. This can be done using the ADSI Edit tool. Open the tool and navigate to the Configuration container in Active Directory. Expand the Services container and delete the Microsoft Exchange container. You may also need to delete other Exchange-related objects, such as address lists and connectors.
Remove Exchange-related attributes from Active Directory user accounts: Exchange-related attributes may be attached to user accounts in Active Directory. These attributes need to be removed in order to complete the removal process. You can use the Active Directory Users and Computers console or PowerShell to remove these attributes.
5. Here is how to remove Exchange Server with ADSI Edit
a. Sign in to the Domain Controller and navigate to the Start menu. Open Administrative Tools and start ADSI Edit.
b. Remove Exchange Server attributes
Once opened, right-click ADSI Edit and click Connect to…
c. Select Configuration and click OK.
d. Expand CN=Configuration, DC=xxxx, DC=com and expand CN=Services. Right-click on CN=Microsoft Exchange and click delete. A warning will show if you are sure to delete this object, confirm with Yes. Do the same with CN=Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover, right-click and click delete.
e. After removing both the objects in ADSI Edit. The screen will look like the following.
6. Remove Exchange Server security groups and system objects attributes
a. Start Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC).
b. Expand the domain and verify that the Organizational Unit (OU) Microsoft Exchange Security Groups and Microsoft Exchange System Objects are present. We can remove it from here or from ADSI Edit. We are going to use ADSI Edit.
c. Right click on Microsoft Exchange Security Groups, and then Delete.
d. Confirm it.
e. Click Yes to confirm to delete Object Microsoft Exchange Security Groups…
7. Delete OU=Microsoft Exchange Security Groups using ADSI Edit
a. Right-click ADSI Edit and click Connect to…
b. Select Default naming context and click OK.
c. Expand DC=xxxx, DC=com. Right-click on OU=Microsoft Exchange Security Groups and click delete. A warning will show if you are sure to delete this object, confirm with Yes. Do the same with CN=Microsoft Exchange System Object, right-click and click delete.
d. We can confirm in ADUC that both the OUs are deleted.
8. Remove Exchange from Active Directory
Remove the Exchange Server if it’s showing in Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC). Right-click the Exchange Server and click Delete.
9. Remove automatically generated Exchange user accounts
There are a few Active Directory users that are generated automatically by Exchange. Some serve as Discovery services, others are used to monitor the health of the Exchange system. These will no longer be needed if you have permanently removed Exchange from your organization.
Go to Active Directory Users and Computers and open the Users container. Right-click the following users and click delete.
To remove a dead domain controller from Active Directory, you will need to perform the following steps:
Log in to a domain controller that is still functioning and open the Active Directory Users and Computers console.
Right-click on the domain name and select “Find”.
In the Find dialog box, select the “Computers” option and enter the name of the dead domain controller.
Right-click on the dead domain controller and select “Delete”.
5. When prompted, select the option to delete the computer object from Active Directory.
6. Check Delete the domain controller anyway and click on Delete if you receive the popup: You are attempting to delete a domain Controller without running the removal wizard.
7. Open the DNS Manager console and remove any DNS records that are associated with the dead domain controller.
8. Open the Sites and Services console and remove any references to the dead domain controller.
9. Remove any lingering references to the dead domain controller from the Active Directory database by running the following command on a functional domain controller:
a. Right Click on Start > Command Prompt (admin) b. Type ntdsutil and enter
c. Type metadata cleanup and press enter
d. Next type remove selected server <servername> and press Enter NOTE: Replace <servername> with domain Controller server you wish to remove
Note: After removing the server from ADUC and ADS&S the ntdsutil step is not needed. It was probably from the Windows 2000/2003 days. Otherwise, you may receive this message:
Connected to localhost using credentials of locally logged on user. LDAP error 0x22(34 (Invalid DN Syntax). Ldap extended error message is 0000208F: NameErr: DSID-03100231, problem 2006 (BAD_NAME), data 8350, best match of: ‘CN=Ntds Settings,dc04’
Win32 error returned is 0x208f(The object name has bad syntax.) ) Unable to determine the domain hosted by the Active Directory Domain Controller (5). Please use the connection menu to specify it.
10. To cConfirm that the dead domain controller has been successfully removed from Active Directory by running the following command on a functional domain controller:
repadmin /showrepl
This will show you the status of replication between the remaining domain controllers in the domain.
Note: It’s important to ensure that you have a full backup of your Active Directory database before performing any changes or deletions.
The Protected Users group is a security group in Windows that was introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. It is designed to provide an additional layer of security for user accounts that require extra protection against credential theft and similar attacks.
Membership in the Protected Users group provides the following security benefits:
Credential caching is disabled: When a user logs in, their credentials are not cached on the local computer or any domain controller. This makes it harder for an attacker to obtain and reuse those credentials.
NTLM authentication is disabled: The use of the older and less secure NTLM authentication protocol is disabled for members of the Protected Users group, forcing the use of Kerberos or other more secure authentication protocols.
Enhanced encryption for Kerberos tickets: Members of the Protected Users group receive enhanced encryption for their Kerberos tickets, making them harder to decrypt and forge.
Membership in the Protected Users group is designed for user accounts that require a high level of protection, such as administrative or service accounts. It is important to note that some applications and services may not be compatible with the additional security measures enforced on members of the Protected Users group, so careful testing and planning is required before adding users to this group.
A typical migration workstream has the following stages:
Discover: Find out what you currently have in your environment.
Pilot: Deploy new cloud capabilities to a small subset of users, applications, or devices, depending on the workstream.
Scale out: Expand the pilot to complete the transition of a capability to the cloud.
Cut over (when applicable): Stop using the old on-premises workload.
Migrating from on-premises Active Directory (AD) to Azure AD involves several steps. Here’s a high-level overview of the migration process:
Assess your current environment: Before you start the migration process, you need to assess your current environment, including the number of users, groups, and applications that rely on AD.
Set up Azure AD Connect: Azure AD Connect is a tool that allows you to synchronize your on-premises AD with Azure AD. You need to download and install Azure AD Connect on a server in your on-premises environment.
Configure Azure AD Connect: Once Azure AD Connect is installed, you need to configure it to synchronize your on-premises AD with Azure AD. You can choose to synchronize all of your AD objects or only a subset of them.
Verify synchronization: After you configure Azure AD Connect, you need to verify that synchronization is working as expected. You can do this by checking the Azure AD Connect synchronization status or by verifying that changes made in AD are being reflected in Azure AD.
Test user sign-in: Once synchronization is working, you need to test user sign-in to Azure AD. You can do this by signing in to Azure AD with an on-premises AD account.
Switch to Azure AD authentication: After testing, you can switch your applications and services to use Azure AD authentication instead of on-premises AD authentication. You may need to update application configurations to use Azure AD authentication.
Decommission on-premises AD: Once all applications and services have been migrated to Azure AD authentication, you can decommission your on-premises AD.
Keep in mind that the migration process may vary depending on the complexity of your environment and the applications and services you’re using. It’s recommended that you thoroughly plan and test the migration before making any changes in production.
case 1
Please help me to see if this are the correct steps * Sync On Premise AD to Azure AD through Azure AD Connect * After Sync Create Azure AD DS and Sync to Azure AD (for Which VM needs to be created which will have role of Domain Services * Part of above process we need to create a Virtual Network and 2 Subnets one for Azure AD DS and other for VM server. 4) Does it mean we can remove the on premise Domain Services after that process.
Yes, the steps you have mentioned are correct. Just to add to the text in red below, the VM will just have the binaries to manage Active Directory, it won’t be promoted as a Domain Controller.
When Azure AD DS is deployed, 2 domain controllers are deployed in the backend and access to the VMs of those domain controllers is not provided.
Note: In case of Azure ADDS, you won’t have Enterprise administrator privileges, due to which you might not be able to perform all the tasks that you can perform in on-premises AD. Also, keep in mind that schema extension and geo-distributed deployment is not supported with Azure AD DS.
Case 2: Has anyone fully migrated to Azure AD and have any advice or know of any “gotcha’s”? What capabilities do you lose? Have you found any issues with deploying Group Policies (most of ours are password requirements related, screen lock timers for PC’s and Bit Locker)? I feel like the more I read about AAD there seem to be more capabilities but I have not found anything that shows what it doesn’t have which can be more important than what it does.
Azure Active Directory is not designed to be the cloud version of Active Directory. It is not a domain controller or a directory in the cloud that will provide the exact same capabilities with AD. It actually provides many more capabilities in a different way.
That’s why there is no actual “migration” path from Active Directory to Azure Active Directory. You can synchronize your on-premises directories (Active Directory or other) to Azure Active Directory but not migrate your computer accounts, group policies, OU etc.
As you can see here Azure Active Directory is an identity and access management solution for hybrid or cloud-only implementations. It can extend the reach of your on-premises identities to any SaaS application hosted in any cloud. It can provide secure remote access to on-premises applications that you want to publish to external users. It can be the center of your cross-organization collaboration by providing access for your partners to your resources. It provides identity management to your consumer-facing application by using social identity providers. Cloud app discovery, Multi-Factor Authentication, protection of your identities in the cloud, reporting of Sign-ins from possibly infected devices, leaked credentials report, user behavioral analysis are a few additional things that we couldn’t even imagine with the traditional Active Directory on-premises.
Even the recently announced Azure Active Directory Domain Services are not a usual DC as a service that you could use to replicate your existing Active Directory implementation to the cloud. It is a stand-alone service that can offer domain services to your Azure VMs and your directory-aware applications if you decide to move them to Azure infrastructure services. But with no replication to any other on-premises or cloud (in a VM) domain controller.
If you want to migrate your domain controllers in the cloud to use them for traditional task you could deploy domain controllers in Azure Virtual Machines and replicate via VPN.
VPC CIDR stands for Virtual Private Cloud Classless Inter-Domain Routing. It is an IP addressing scheme used to identify and allocate IP addresses to resources within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
A VPC is a virtual network that you can create in AWS to launch your EC2 instances, RDS databases, and other resources. When you create a VPC, you must specify an IP address range in the form of a CIDR block. The CIDR block is a range of IP addresses in the format of x.x.x.x/y, where x.x.x.x is the network address and y is the number of bits used for the network prefix. For example, a CIDR block of 10.0.0.0/16 means that the VPC has 65,536 IP addresses available for use.
CIDR allows network administrators to allocate IP addresses more efficiently by dividing them into smaller subnets. This can help to reduce the amount of unused IP addresses and simplify network management.
A malformed packet is a type of network packet that does not adhere to the expected format or structure for that particular type of packet. A network packet is a unit of data that is sent over a network from one device to another, and it includes a header that describes important information about the packet, such as the source and destination IP addresses and port numbers.
A packet can become malformed due to a variety of reasons, such as errors in the network, hardware, or software that cause the packet to be constructed incorrectly. Malformed packets can also be created intentionally by attackers as part of an attack, such as a buffer overflow attack or a denial-of-service attack.
When a device receives a malformed packet, it may not be able to interpret it correctly, which can cause issues with the network, such as slow performance, errors, or even crashes. Malformed packets can also be a security risk because they can be a sign of an attempted attack or can be used to exploit vulnerabilities in the network.
Network administrators often monitor their networks for malformed packets as part of their overall network security strategy. Network security devices such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems can detect and block malformed packets to protect the network from potential threats.
To enable password reset through self-service for Office 365, you can follow these steps:
In the Microsoft 365 admin center, in the left navigation pane, select Settings > Org settings, and then Security & privacy.
2. Under Self-service password reset, select Go to the Azure portal to turn on self-service password reset.
3. In the left navigation pane, select Users, and then on the Users – all users page, select Password reset.
4. Select All to enable self-service password reset, and then select Save.
In the left navigation pane, select Authentication methods and select the Number of methods required to reset and desired Methods available to users, and then select Save.
Or
Sign in to the Azure Active Directory (AD) portal using an account with administrator privileges: https://aad.portal.azure.com/
In the Azure AD portal, navigate to “Azure Active Directory” > “Security” > “Authentication methods.”
Click on the “Password reset” tab.
Under the “Properties” section, ensure that the “Users can reset passwords using the reset password portal” option is turned on.
Under the “Registration” section, ensure that the “Users can register security info to use for password reset” option is turned on.
Under the “Notifications” section, configure the notification settings for password reset.
Click on the “Save” button to apply the changes.
Once you have enabled password reset through self-service, your Office 365 users will be able to reset their own passwords without needing to contact an administrator or IT support. They will need to register their security information, such as an alternate email address or phone number, in order to use self-service password reset.
Note that enabling self-service password reset requires an Azure AD Premium subscription. If you do not have a premium subscription, you may need to upgrade your subscription or contact Microsoft support for assistance.
