Active Directory (AD) is one of your company’s most critical resources, storing information about the network resources across domains, and providing central authentication and authorization services for your entire IT infrastructure.

Active Directory is synonymous with security. The AD objects that comprise the framework of structures forming Active Directory provide critical information on the properties of these objects. This includes schema, organization of these objects, access control, and security settings.

With all this power comes responsibility. Because each schema object is integral to the definition of Active Directory objects, deactivating or changing these objects can have serious consequences. As many of you know by experience, a schema object, once altered, will automatically propagate through your Active Directory infrastructure. You will then be forced to live with these changes because once they have been created or modified; they can only be deactivated — never deleted.

Misconfiguration of AD is the largest source of unplanned downtime. Small changes inexpertly made to AD can wreak havoc with your organization, cause significant downtime, and impair future operations. This includes the objects held within a domain that are grouped into Organizational Units (OUs) where group policies are applied in the creation of Group Policy Objects (GPOs).

Ensim Demonstrates Active Directory Tool at Microsoft Management Summit 2008

Ensim Unify protects Active Directory
All administrators know that access to AD is not for everyone and protecting this vital resource has become a key component of IT policy administration. Ensim Unify allows senior IT policy makers to insulate AD from potentially disastrous changes by delegating access for specific tasks to the appropriate people. This allows:

• Granular role-based delegated administration
• Creation of customizable provisioning and de-provisioning policies
• Security Group management
• OU management at appropriate levels
• Reporting management for security audits

These are the user provisioning and access control capabilities that keep Active Directory safe, and at the same time increase end user productivity.

Microsoft Active Directory
Active Directory (AD) is an implementation of directory services by Microsoft for use primarily in Windows environments. Its main purpose is to provide central authentication and authorization services for Windows-based computers. Active Directory is a central component of the Windows platform. The directory service provides the means to manage the identities and relationships that make up network environments.