Darren Siegel

Active Directory

Compliance

Password Management

Darren Siegel is a cyber security expert at Specops Software. He works as a lead IT engineer, helping organizations solve complex challenges within IT security. Darren has more than 15 years’ experience within Active Directory, IT security, servers, storage, virtualization, cloud, and identity and access management.

Articles written by Darren Siegel

Mar
23

PowerShell Scripts to Force Password Change for All Users After a Security Incident

After a confirmed or even suspected security breach it may be advised to have all users change their passwords. In this post we'll review how to confirm if users have changed their passwords and how to force users to complete a…
Read More
Mar
29

Using Major League Baseball team names as passwords is a homerun for hackers

The Cincinnati Reds, America’s oldest baseball team, may have one of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) worst pre-season odds to win the World Series, but the team sits alone in first place on Specops’ breached password list. This is according to…
Read More
Jul
20

How to check password complexity requirements in Active Directory

Active Directory password policies are not always what they seem – often there are discrepancies on settings such as password length, password complexity, maximum password age, or long-forgotten Fine-Grained Password Policies configured in the domain. In this blog post we will…
Read More
Jul
15

Resetting the clock on Active Directory password expiration

I recently worked with a customer who was implementing Specops Password Policy with Length-Based password aging. Usually we see customers use this to extend their maximum password age, for example: the current Active Directory maximum password age is 90 days; Specops…
Read More
Apr
15

How to configure Specops Password Notification

In this blog post we will review some common configurations for Specops Password Notification. Password Notification is a tool for configuring and sending password expiration reminders to your users. This tool is especially useful for communicating with remote users who…
Read More
Feb
12

How to configure password expiration notifications

When it comes to notifying users that their passwords are going to expire soon, more communication is always better. Users do not enjoy the password change process; keeping them informed as to when their password will expire is a great way…
Read More
Sep
16

How to enforce password complexity in O365?

As organizations continue migrating data and services to the cloud, management and enforcement of strong password policies has never been more important. When it comes to Office 365 cloud-only users (not synchronized with a corresponding to an Active Directory account)…
Read More
Jul
17

Password length best practices

When it comes to making strong passwords, the single most important factor is the length of the password. As long as a password isn’t easily guessable by other means (e.g. use of common words, username, repeating characters) length is your…
Read More
May
24

Finding users who have not changed their password recently

One of the primary challenges with implementing a new password policy in Active Directory is ensuring users have changed their passwords to be compliant with that new policy. As we cannot view users’ current passwords in plain text to confirm…
Read More
Apr
24

Specops Authentication enrollment data in Active Directory

The Specops Authentication cloud platform is unique in that user data is stored in the customer’s on-prem Active Directory database. Usernames, passwords, and enrollment data/proofs for the various Identity Services provided by Specops Authentication are stored in the customer’s Active…
Read More