Microsoft Defender for Identity is a security solution that helps organizations protect their on-premises Active Directory (AD) environments. It detects advanced threats, compromised identities, and malicious activities by analyzing behaviors and applying machine learning algorithms. Defender for Identity provides insights into suspicious activities such as lateral movement and privilege escalation, helping IT teams respond swiftly to potential breaches. It offers recommendations for improving security posture and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other Microsoft security solutions to provide a unified defense across the organization's infrastructure. This solution enhances overall security by preventing unauthorized access and minimizing the impact of cyberattacks on Active Directory environments.
 
Features of Microsoft Defender for Identity:
 
1. Identity Threat Detection and Investigation:
Suspicious Activity Detection: Automatically detects suspicious activities related to user identity and behavior, such as unusual login patterns, privilege escalations, and lateral movement attempts within the network.
Security Alerts: Provides real-time alerts for identity-related threats, such as pass-the-hash attacks, brute-force login attempts, and insider threats. Alerts include detailed information to assist security teams in investigating incidents.
Intelligent Security Insights: Leverages advanced machine learning and behavioral analytics to detect anomalies in user behavior, helping identify potential threats like account compromise or malicious insiders.
2. Behavioral Analytics:
User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA): Tracks and analyzes user and entity activities across the organization to detect abnormal behaviors that could indicate malicious activities, such as accessing unauthorized resources or performing out-of-character actions.
Risk-based Detection: Automatically adjusts detection thresholds based on the risk and context of the activity. This helps prevent false positives while ensuring that high-risk activities are flagged promptly.
3. Privileged Identity and Access Monitoring:
Privileged Account Monitoring: Monitors the activities of privileged accounts and alerts administrators if there are any unauthorized or unusual activities involving accounts with elevated permissions.
Privilege Escalation Detection: Detects when a user account gains unauthorized elevated privileges, helping to identify and stop potential attacks before they escalate.
Admin Group Membership Monitoring: Tracks changes to administrative group memberships, such as additions, deletions, or modifications to groups like Domain Admins or Enterprise Admins.
4. Active Directory Security:
Active Directory Risk Detection: Detects and helps mitigate risks associated with Active Directory (AD) configurations and permissions, including issues like unpatched domain controllers, legacy protocols, or exposed services.
Directory Enumeration Detection: Identifies and alerts on potential attacks that involve the enumeration of Active Directory objects (e.g., users, groups, and permissions), which attackers may use for reconnaissance during an attack.
Sensitive Group Detection: Detects if an attacker is trying to gain access to sensitive AD groups that hold privileged permissions, such as Enterprise Admins, Domain Admins, or Schema Admins.
5. Advanced Incident Investigation and Forensics:
Interactive Investigation: Provides security teams with tools to interactively investigate incidents, drill down into specific alerts, and review detailed attack timelines.
Timeline and Attack Path Visualizations: Displays attack paths and provides visualizations of the sequence of events during an attack, helping security analysts understand how the attacker moved within the environment.
Cross-Platform Investigations: Integrates with other Microsoft security solutions, such as Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel, to provide a comprehensive view of threats affecting user identities.
6. Integration with Microsoft 365 Defender:
Unified Threat Protection: Integrates with Microsoft 365 Defender, a suite of Microsoft’s advanced threat protection services, to provide a comprehensive security view across endpoints, emails, and identities, improving overall detection and response capabilities.
Cross-Service Investigation: Offers a unified interface for investigating identity-related threats in the context of broader security incidents, ensuring that identities are protected alongside other critical assets like endpoints and email.
7. Advanced Threat Hunting:
Advanced Querying: Provides advanced query capabilities, enabling security teams to conduct deep investigations into user and identity behaviors, historical activity, and alert data.
Threat Hunting with Hunting Queries: Security professionals can use pre-built or custom hunting queries to actively search for hidden threats in their environment, uncovering potential attacks before they fully unfold.
Interactive Search: Allows security teams to run custom searches across vast amounts of identity-related data, improving their ability to identify emerging threats or anomalous patterns that may not have been previously detected.
8. Automated Incident Response:
Automated Responses: Upon detecting a threat, Defender for Identity can trigger automated responses, such as isolating affected accounts, blocking certain activities, or restricting access to sensitive resources.
Customizable Response Actions: Administrators can define specific actions based on particular threats, such as disabling user accounts, enforcing password resets, or alerting security teams for immediate manual intervention.
9. Cloud and Hybrid Environment Support:
Hybrid Identity Protection: Supports both cloud-based and on-premises Active Directory environments, ensuring consistent protection whether your organization is using Microsoft 365, on-prem AD, or hybrid identity configurations.
Azure AD Integration: Integrates with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for cloud-based identity protection, enabling organizations that use Azure AD for identity and access management to detect and respond to cloud-based identity threats.
10. Compromise Detection and Response:
Account Compromise Detection: Detects account compromises by identifying signs of suspicious activity, such as login attempts from unusual locations, login behavior that deviates from the norm, or use of stolen credentials.
Credential Theft Protection: Identifies credential theft attempts, such as pass-the-ticket, pass-the-hash, and Kerberos ticket attacks, which are common methods used by attackers to maintain persistence on a network.
Lateral Movement Detection: Identifies when attackers move laterally within the network by using stolen credentials or other malicious methods to access additional systems, applications, or data.