The Ultimate List of Free Active Directory Tools

In today’s fast and volatile IT environment, managing Active Directory (AD) efficiently is paramount to maintaining a secure and functional environment for your users. While there are numerous paid solutions available, many IT professionals overlook the relative abundance of free tools that can streamline AD management tasks. Besides making your CFO happy, these tools offer robust features that can simplify complex administrative tasks and enhance security.

In this blog post, we’ll explore why IT pros should consider integrating free Active Directory tools into their workflows and how these tools can assist in their day-to-day tasks.

List of Free Tools

Let’s get started with our list of free Active Directory tools:

1. BeyondTrust PowerBroker Auditor

The first free tool on our list is BeyondTrust’s PowerBroker Auditor – a comprehensive security auditing solution that offers organizations visibility into potential security issues with user activity inside Active Directory. PowerBroker Auditor empowers IT teams to analyze and monitor risky user behaviors, ensure compliance with regulatory bodies, and identify security risks.

The tool captures login attempts, password updates, privileged escalations, and other resource access records. Its proprietary engine analyzes this data to pinpoint anomalies, suspicious activity, and other security threats.

This product offers comprehensive reporting to demonstrate compliance with data types like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR. Also, PowerBroker Auditor can be integrated with other solutions to provide a more holistic view of a company’s security environment and status.

2. ManageEngine’s 12-tool bundle

ManageEngine, makers of identity and access management software like AD Manager Plus and M365 Manager Plus, offers 12 free tools as a bundle in AD Manager Plus. These tools are designed to streamline and simplify various AD administrative tasks.

Tools include the Weak Password Users Report, Empty Password Reporter, and AD Query Tool. AD Query Tool offers an easy-to-use interface with the ability to utilize LDAP queries into user and other objects in your Active Directory (AD) environment(s).

Another useful tool, the AD Replication Manager Tool, makes manual replication events a breeze. It allows you to force replication across your domain and DCs, and view information about historical replications.

3. SpecOps Command

Another powerful free AD management tool, SpecOps Command provides IT teams with a wonderful set of features for automating various tasks. A user-friendly interface assists newbies in harnessing powerful scripting languages, allowing IT Pros of all experience levels to manage users, groups, computers, and other AD objects.

The tool seamlessly integrates with AD, giving you real-time visibility into user activity records, group membership info, and other object attributes. Building efficient day-to-day tasks for your IT team is simple with Command’s library of advanced features such as change auditing, reporting, and delegation.

Highlighting security issues and optimizing the flow of daily IT Pro activities makes this a valuable tool for reducing admin overhead and improving IT overall productivity.

4. SolarWinds – Permission Analyzer

SolarWinds Permission Analyzer is designed to offer instant visibility into user and group permissions in AD. This free tool shows how various users’ permissions are inherited, browses permissions by group or individual users, and even analyzes permissions based on group memberships. Much more efficient than using Active Directory Users and Computers and falling down the rabbit hole of layered users and groups and all the permission layers!

The tool lets you select a user or group, then view the associated permissions. Plain and simple. It can also display a comprehensive list of permissions, including inheriting from parent objects. The built-in functionality makes it much easier to troubleshoot permission issues, audit access rights, and ensure compliance standards are adhered to.

5. MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports Lite

MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports Lite is designed to provide IT teams with insights into their Active Directory environment. It offers a wide range of pre-built reports that can be customized to meet specific reporting needs.

The tool queries Active Directory objects and generates reports based on the specified criteria. Reports can be filtered, exported into common formats, and sorted. This allows IT teams to analyze user activities, group memberships, and password policies.

Value comes from providing a convenient and efficient way to gather information about AD. The tool can help identify potential security vulnerabilities and monitor user behavior.

6. Quest ActiveRoles

Quest Active Roles offers comprehensive automation and management of AD. Its main selling point is that it addresses the limitations of native AD and Entra ID tools by providing automated provisioning, offboarding, and other group management daily processes.

It uses a policy-based approach to manage user and group accounts, helping to enforce security policies and compliance regulations. These features enable IT teams to maintain security and a well-organized AD environment.

7. Netwrix Account Lockout Examiner

Netwrix Account Lockout Examiner helps IT Pros determine the causal factors behind user account lockouts. A very user-friendly interface gathers relevant event viewer records from various domain controllers, shows patterns and potential security threats, and also takes corrective action.

Investigating and troubleshooting account lockouts is at your fingertips – the tool’s detailed reports and analysis capabilities offer you proactive firepower in your arsenal to resolve your users’ access issues with ease.

8. Netwrix PingCastle

Another free tool bought by Netwrix is called PingCastle. This is a powerful tool to audit and assess the overall security level of your Active Directory environment. After it runs some behind-the-scenes PowerShell scripts and other commands, it generates an easy-to-read HTML dashboard to assist you in identifying discovered vulnerabilities and community-driven guidance on how to go about resolving them. This makes it an invaluable tool for IT management and operations teams, as it helps establish a common vocabulary and priorities for action plans.

PingCastle is generally updated twice a year to keep up-to-date with the latest security threats. The tool’s methodology is based on years of experience in IT and security consulting, making it a reliable and effective solution for Active Directory security assessments.

9. Insight for Active Directory (Sysinternals)

Insight for Active Directory (ADInsight) collects and analyzes Active Directory data, and provides detailed information about user activities, group memberships, and object changes.

ADInsight uses DLL injection techniques to intercept calls that applications make in specific Windows libraries (DLLs). Unlike network monitor tools, ADInsight intercepts and interprets client-side APIs. It monitors any process into which it can load its tracing DLL, which means it does not require admin permissions.

10. ADFind

ADFind is a very simple command-line tool developed privately by an individual that queries Active Directory. It uses ldapsearch, search.vbs, ldp, dsquery, and dsget tools with other features for good measure. This tool proceeded dsquery and dsget for years.

11. PRTG Active Directory monitoring

PRTG Active Directory monitoring is another useful solution designed to show you how to secure your AD environment and keep it as error-free as possible. You can monitor your entire Active Directory forest, track group memberships, and identify inactive users based on reporting.

Your IT teams gain significant value with this free tool due to its enhanced security and operational standards. Monitoring changes in crucial AD objects makes it easy to be proactive in maintaining stability. Keeping security breaches at bay is always good measure.

12. Semperis

Semperis offers a plethora of high-quality free tools designed to assist IT professionals with various Active Directory tasks. These tools provide valuable insights, automation capabilities, and security enhancements, helping companies streamline their Active Directory management and improve overall security.

I installed and performed a limited evaluation of these two tools in my Active Directory lab environment. I found both tools to be rather easy to use and very detailed in their analysis capabilities.

Purple Knight

Purple Knight, built by Semperis, is a security assessment tool for AD, Entra ID, and Okta environments. It helps you discover indicators of exposure and indicators of compromise in your hybrid infrastructures.

Its Best Features

• AD, Entra ID, and Okta security audit
• Community-driven AD threat intelligence
• Indicators of Exposure (IoE) and Indicators of Compromise (IoC)
• MITRE ATT&CK correlation
• Prioritized AD security guidance from Semperis experts

Forest Druid

Another free tool developed by Semperis, Forest Druid is an open-source tool that helps organizations identify and mitigate security risks within their AD environments. It focuses specifically on protecting ‘Tier 0’ assets, which are the most critical and sensitive/vulnerable components of your networks, such as DCs and admin accounts.

How it works:

1. Identify Tier 0 Assets – Forest Druid identifies Tier 0 assets within your AD.
2. Map attack paths – Next, it maps out potential attack paths that could lead to critical assets, showing you vulnerabilities.
3. Prioritize remediation – Helps organizations remediate identified issues proactively and securely.,

13. Cayosoft Free AD tools

Cayosoft free tools for Active Directory management are designed to simplify and enhance the daily management tasks for IT Pros and admins. Here is a list of the main tools.

• Web Portal for AD Management
• Web-based Self-Service Password Reset & Notifications
• Web-based BitLocker Recovery Key Access
• Office 365 License Option Changes
• Hybrid & Enterprise Reporting
• Web-based AD LAPS Password Access
• Suspend for AD Users & Groups
• PowerShell Module for Graph APIs

14. CJWDev AD Permissions Reporter

CJWDev AD Permissions Reporter is a specialized tool designed for analyzing and reporting on Active Directory (AD) permissions. It provides a detailed view of permissions across your entire AD environment, helping admins understand who has access to what and ensuring compliance with security policies.

With a user-friendly interface, the tool allows you to generate comprehensive reports on user, group, and computer permissions within Active Directory, making it easier to identify misconfigurations or excessive privileges.

15. Lepide free AD management tools

To close out our list of free AD tools, Lepide offers several free AD management tools that can help IT teams improve security and make routine tasks more efficient. Here are their most prominent tools.

• DataDiff for Active Directory – Compares two AD environments to identify differences.
• AD Self-Service Password Reset – Enables users to reset their passwords without needing IT support.
• AD Change Auditor Free – Monitors and audits changes made to AD objects.
• Active Directory Password Policy Analyzer – Analyzes AD password policies and provides recommendations for improvement.
• AD Permissions Analyzer – Identifies user and group permissions to reduce potential security risks.

Conclusion

Is using a free tool the right thing to do? What happens when there’s no support for it? Is it too risky to rely on a free tool for an enterprise of thousands of users? There are pros and cons to using a free tool and to spending money on a paid solution.

The core fundamental aspects you should weigh include:

Community Support

• Although you likely won’t have reliable, robust technical support with a free tool, you certainly will have community support from others using the same tools.

Flexibility

• Many free tools are open-source, allowing customization to fit your organization’s specific needs.

Limited Features

• Free tools will often carry a limited set of features. Paid tools undoubtedly come with more robust feature sets.

Security Risks

• Using free tools, even open-source, can open your environment to potential security risks. Paid solutions will almost always have warranties or disclosures about how they were tested and validated safe for use.

While free tools can be a great starting point, especially for smaller organizations, the lack of reliable support and potential security risks are significant drawbacks. Paid solutions, on the other hand, offer a spectrum of robust support and advanced features, making them a better choice for larger organizations or those with critical AD management needs.