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08/07/2026 7:04 pm
TL;DR: Active Directory privilege escalation is still a foundational enterprise risk because most organisations cannot accurately determine effective privileged access, leaving excessive permissions and escalation paths hidden in plain sight, according to Paramount Defenses. That matters because access review without effective-permission insight cannot reliably prevent compromise, especially in environments where AD underpins core security controls.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Paramount Defenses: The Paramount Brief on Active Directory privilege escalation risk
By the numbers:
- Active Directory is the foundation of cyber security and IT at 85% of all organizations worldwide.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when Active Directory access reviews ignore effective permissions?
A: Access reviews become a compliance exercise instead of a control.
Q: Why do hidden privilege paths in Active Directory increase breach risk?
A: Hidden privilege paths matter because attackers only need one route from a low-value foothold to a high-value administrative outcome.
Q: How can IAM teams identify privilege escalation paths before attackers do?
A: They need to analyse the directory as a graph of reachable control, not a list of assigned roles.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory effective privileged access across Active Directory Build an inventory that resolves inherited rights, nested groups, delegated administration, and object-level permissions so reviewers can see what accounts can truly do.
- Map escalation paths from every privileged foothold Trace how modest rights on users, groups, ACLs, trust objects, and GPO-linked resources can chain into domain-level control, then remove the shortest viable paths first.
- Rebuild access recertification around effective permissions Do not certify direct assignments alone.
What's in the full article
Paramount Defenses' full brief covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Specific examples of Active Directory privilege escalation tasks such as DCSync, AdminSDHolder manipulation, and malicious GPO linking
- The directory-side controls needed to identify who has what effective permissions across nested groups and delegated admin paths
- A concise mitigation model for eliminating escalation paths once they are discovered
- The executive framing and downloadable brief used to support internal risk discussions
👉 Read Paramount Defenses' brief on Active Directory privilege escalation risk →
Active Directory privilege escalation: what IAM teams are missing?
Explore further
08/07/2026 7:28 pm
Effective permissions, not assigned permissions, are the real governance boundary in Active Directory. The article's central claim is that organisations provision access accurately but cannot reliably assess what those grants mean after inheritance, delegation, and group nesting are applied. That is an IAM and PAM failure mode because the control plane is recording intent, while the attack surface is defined by effective reach. Practitioners should treat effective-permission analysis as the governing truth for AD privilege oversight.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- In the same report, enterprises that have experienced a compromised NHI averaged 2.7 separate incidents in the past 12 months, which shows how quickly one identity failure can become repeated exposure.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when Active Directory privilege escalation leads to compromise?
A: Accountability sits with the teams that own identity governance, privileged access management, and directory administration, because they control the permissions model and the recertification process. If effective access is not measurable, then ownership for the resulting exposure is shared across those functions, not confined to one operator.
👉 Read our full editorial: Active Directory privilege escalation remains a top enterprise risk
