summary

what to do

user housekeeping

  1. re-certify all users monthly (or as frequently as reasonably possible)
  2. ensure only users that require it are in their groups, such as Remote Access group < re-certify these regularly
  3. MFA is actually enforced on all users that require it (i.e. don’t leave users in such groups as the Remote Access group without it: these will be the users the ‘spray and pray’ works on)

password management

  1. make sure all users re-certify (i.e. change) their password once ever 6 months
  2. use three or four word pass phrases instead of easy to forget mixes of long in-decipherable characters
  3. ban the use of commonly used passwords (there are lists with a million such passwords)

ms conditional access

  1. if using MS365 there are additional protections and alerts, such as automatic denial of the use of a password from the list mentioned above

role based access control

  1. inhibits lateral movement by restricting a user#s access to specific roles
    1. i.e. identity used to authenticate remote access users between firewall and domain controller is specific and restricted to that role
    2. sales can only see their directories/files on file storage (sharepoint, on-prem, etc)
    3. administrators do not use their admin accounts to login to their workstations and browse the internet