Active Directory is often considered the holy grail for cyber attackers, and for good reason. Once they have control of this critical asset, they essentially have the keys to the kingdom and can easily access, create, or modify any of the main accounts, including trust relationships and domain security policies. Despite best efforts and intentions, Active Directory may be far more at risk than we would like. But how can you better protect this essential asset? Perhaps the best way to start is to understand exactly how attackers are successfully accessing it in the first place.

The cybersecurity world has so many acronyms, and yet we pretend to know what all of them are. However, there are many occasions that leave us wracking our brains, trying to remember what one stands for. Is it a product? An organization? A process? One acronym that everyone should know is OWASP—the Open Web Application Security Project.