Globally, more than 95 percent of Fortune 1000 companies rely on Active Directory (AD) for authentication and single-sign-on support for their user populations.

As it is nearly everywhere – in every company, organization and government agency – this makes AD a primary target for attackers looking to steal your intellectual property, your customer data or to hold your data for ransom.

Active Directory has changed significantly since its initial rollout in 2000, including both in technology and in how it is used.

Cloud services, such as Office 365 and cloud-provided applications, change the way work is done and how AD connects all this information. This ranges from highly technical long-term exploits to simple and obvious oversights.

Here are some of the most typical AD-specific exploits seen today.