https://lesitedefrancois.be/en/tags/microsoft/Recent content in Microsoft on Le Site de FrançoisHugo -- gohugo.ioen© 2026 Françoishttps://lesitedefrancois.be/en/security/ad/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://lesitedefrancois.be/en/security/ad/<p><strong>Active Directory (AD)</strong> is Microsoft&rsquo;s enterprise directory and identity platform, first released with Windows 2000 and now the dominant identity provider in enterprise environments worldwide. It combines four technologies into a single integrated system: <strong>LDAP</strong> as the directory access protocol for querying and modifying identity data; <strong>Kerberos 5</strong> as the authentication protocol for issuing tickets that prove identity without transmitting passwords; <strong>DNS</strong> as the service location mechanism that clients use to discover domain controllers, Kerberos KDCs, and LDAP servers; and <strong>Group Policy</strong> as the configuration management system that pushes security settings, software installation, and policy enforcement to every joined machine. These four components are inseparable in practice: a Linux host joining an AD domain receives a Kerberos principal in AD&rsquo;s KDC, a machine account object in the AD LDAP directory, a DNS record for its hostname, and (optionally) Group Policy Objects applied to it. The AD forest is the trust boundary: multiple domains can exist within a forest and all share a common schema, configuration, and Global Catalog, with transitive Kerberos trust between them.</p>