Microsoft’s Active Directory Security Feature

Active directory is the LDAP-compliant directory server included with Windows 2000, it stores all windows 2000 information, including groups, policies and users. Active Directory also stores information about network resources such as databases and this makes information available to all network administrators and applications users. It also enables users to access network resources with a single login, the scope of Active Directory can range from storing all the resources of a small computer network to store all several wide area networks’ resources. By doing this, users can easily gain access as they only required to logged in once. However, this could also be disastrous as once hackers gain users’ password, they can gain access without users’ knowledge. 

 

Some of the active directory features would include:

-          supports X.500 standard for global directories

-          supports LDAP to enable inter-directory operability

-          designed to be both forward compatible and backward compatible

-          a hierarchical organization that provides a single point of access for system administration such as management of clients, servers, applications and user accounts to reduce errors and redundancy

-          capability for secure extension of network operations to the web

-          an object-orientated storage organization which allows easier access to information

Reference:

http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/definition/Active-Directory