Darren James

Active Directory

Password Management

Security

Darren James is a Senior Product Manager at Specops Software, an Outpost24 company. Darren is a seasoned cybersecurity professional with more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry. He has worked as a consultant across various organizations and sectors, including central and local governments, retail and energy. His areas of specialization include identity and access management, Active Directory, and Azure AD. Darren has been with Specops Software for more than 12 years and brings his expertise to the support and development of world-class password security and authentication solutions.

Articles written by Darren James

Jan
24

PCI compliance requirements in the UK

In 2018, criminals successfully stole £1.4 billion through fraud and scams. Now more than ever, businesses that processes cardholder data look to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for security recommendations. PCI DSS is a set of…
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Sep
25

What causes BitLocker Recovery Mode?

Sysadmins often ask us about BitLocker Recovery Mode. They have implemented BitLocker as their endpoint encryption solution which means that the IT service desk now has to issue recovery keys. Here’s where it gets complicated – the recovery keys are…
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Jul
03

Active directory password audit best practices

Passwords are the bane of any IT Security Officers life, but as they are still the primary way of authenticating users in Active Directory, it’s a good idea to check that your users are making good password choices. Unfortunately, the…
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Jun
03

How to deploy a MSI package with Group Policy?

Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) was once hailed as a great incentive for all organizations to upgrade their NT4 domains to Active Directory. It meant that there was no longer a need for those complex application deployment tools, it can…
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May
22

How to enforce password history in Active Directory

The “Enforce password history” setting in Active Directory is used to determine the number of unique passwords a user must use before they can use an old password again. This is an important setting because password reuse is a common…
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May
08

What are the benefits of Full Disk Encryption

Full (or Whole) Disk Encryption (FDE) is a phrase used to describe the encryption of a computer hard drive(s) so it is not easily readable by an unauthorized user. As the name suggests, because this is done at disk level…
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May
02

How to change user passwords in Active Directory

We often get asked how our self-service solution changes passwords on a user account in Active Directory. It’s a more interesting question than it sounds as there are many processes at work here, and many ways to do it. I…
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Apr
01

Cyber Essentials Password Policy

Passwords play an important role in the Cyber Essentials scheme as they are a common means of authenticating true users, while preventing unauthorized access. Two of the five controls in the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials scheme address password security requirements…
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Mar
18

Sync passwords between Active Directory domains

There are many reasons why you might want to sync a password between two Active Directory (AD) domains. We commonly see requests from customers who are looking at migrating their users from one domain to another. This could be for…
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Oct
23

How and why the NHS should transform password policy for greater security

As the largest employer in the United Kingdom, and the fifth largest in the world, the NHS has a responsibility to lead the way in cyber security. After all, there's much at stake. For a high profile and public-facing organisation…
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