Domain Admins vs. Enterprise Admins

Hello All,

Hope this post finds you in good health and spirit.

This post is about different between Domain Admins and Enterprise Admins. By default, Schema admin and enterprise admin exist in root domain in forest. A child domain or tree domain that you create in the forest will not have its own Schema Admins group or Enterprise Admins group.

Enterprise Admins Group

The Enterprise Admins group is a high privileged group in a forest root domain. Members of this group have full control of all domains in the forest. The membership of this group must be limited, and accounts must be only added when required.

By default, this group is a member of the Administrators group on all domain controllers in the forest. By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because this group has full control of the forest, add users with caution.

The membership of this group must be limited. This group is used to do enterprise level of activity. Additional accounts must only be added when changes to the enterprise level are necessary and then must be removed. By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because this group has significant power in the forest, add users with caution.

Domain Admins Group

Members of this group have full control of the domain. By default, this group is a member of the Administrators group on all domain controllers, all domain workstations, and all domain member servers at the time they are joined to the domain.

By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because the group has full control in the domain, add users with caution.

Maintaining Enterprise Security

To keep an enterprise’s authentication and authorization platform safe, it’s crucial to comprehend the responsibilities and duties of all the highly privileged groups in AD. It can be complicated and challenging to keep track of all these groupings and the varied rights attached to them. 

Also check Schema admins 

Schema Admins group

The Schema Admins group is a high privileged group in a forest root domain. The membership of this group must be limited. This group is use to modify the schema of forest. Additional accounts must only be added when changes to the schema are necessary and then must be removed.

By default, the Administrator account is a member of this group. Because this group has significant power in the forest, add users with caution.

Netdom is a command line tool used to manage Active Directory domains and trusts. The Netdom tool is built into Windows Server 2003 and up. 1. On any domain controller open the command prompt.

On Windows 2012 server click the start button and type cmd, windows will search and return the command prompt. Click on “Command Prompt”.

From the command prompt type “netdom query fsmo” and hit “enter”.

netdom query fsmo

The Configuration container’s effective Domain Admin access appears in the screenshot below. The Enterprise Admins group is the object owner, as you can see. All of this container’s permissions are prohibited to the Domain Admins group.

Protecting Domain Administrative Credentials

• Tier 0
  • These identities have access to most if not all objects within the directory. All elevated users within this Tier should only be used to authenticate to Tier 0 devices. Access to lower Tier devices should be blocked..
• Tier 1
  • Devices within this Tier contain the Data and Intellectual property that needs to be protected. A separate account should be created for each user that needs to manage devices on this Tier. No down level or up level access should be granted identities within this Tier.
• Tier 2
  • Unprivileged access to the user’s workstation as well as PoLP read/write Tier 1 data.

So, that’s all in this blog. I will meet you soon with next stuff .Have a nice day !!!

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