From the course: Penetration Testing Essential Training

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What is Active Directory?

What is Active Directory?

- [Instructor] Microsoft provides an LDAP compliant identity provider called Active Directory as an optional feature in its server range. So when we purchase a Windows server, we've also got a latent Active Directory waiting to be activated. However, with Microsoft we get much more than just an LDAP directory. The full name of the Microsoft Identity provider is Active Directory Domain Services, and it not only provides identities, but is usually deployed as a complete domain management system as well. Understanding Active Directory is an important part of being an effective pen tester as it's pretty much part of any enterprise network, and it's often part of an adversary's attack chain. I won't go into the details of how we set up and manage active directories, and we won't set one up for this course. But you can check out the Active Directory courses from Ed Liberman if you want to delve further into this. Let's take a brief look at Windows Server 2019 that I have running. Server…

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