Most engineers think…
Most people think identity security means MFA and a password policy. That stops casual credential stuffing — it does almost nothing once an attacker is inside the network and querying your Active Directory.
Singularity Identity is a dedicated ITDR layer: it watches every Kerberos request, every LDAP query, every credential store access — in real time, from the same lightweight agent that runs EDR. It hardens the AD attack surface, detects privilege-escalation moves the moment they happen, and plants deceptive credentials that turn an attacker's toolkit into a tripwire. Understanding this three-layer model is what lets you answer ITDR questions confidently in any interview or SOC escalation.
① Why ITDR matters — Active Directory is the breach highway
In the majority of major breaches, the attacker's first goal after initial access is to reach Active Directory. Control one privileged AD account and you can move laterally, escalate to Domain Admin, dump credentials, and own the entire estate. The same is true of Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) for cloud and hybrid environments.
ITDR was created to fill the gap between EDR (which watches process and file behaviour) and traditional IAM (which manages who has access). ITDR watches what accounts and identity systems actually do — real-time queries, ticket requests, replication calls — and raises alerts when the pattern looks like a credential attack.
SentinelOne Singularity Identity delivers ITDR from the same agent as the Singularity EDR, so identity and endpoint telemetry are correlated in a single alert timeline. The result: an attacker doing a Kerberoast on the network while also touching a suspicious process shows up as one story, not two disconnected events.
What gap does ITDR fill that traditional EDR and IAM leave open?
② Harden the surface — finding & closing AD exposures before attackers do
Singularity Identity continuously assesses your AD and Entra ID for the misconfigurations attackers hunt for. It surfaces exposures like Kerberoastable accounts (service accounts with SPNs and weak passwords), unconstrained delegation (a setting that lets any service impersonate any user), AS-REP Roastable accounts (accounts with pre-auth disabled), stale privileged accounts, and passwords stored in AD attributes such as the Description field.
Identity posture scoring
Each exposure is scored by exploitability and blast radius. The platform maps the identity attack surface against real attacker techniques (MITRE ATT&CK), so a security team can prioritise remediation: fix the three accounts that would give an attacker a direct path to Domain Admin first, rather than chasing a long tail of low-risk issues.
Hardening is not a one-time scan. Singularity Identity monitors continuously, raising a new finding the moment a mis-configuration reappears — for example when a helpdesk ticket re-enables pre-auth exemption on a service account.
Singularity Identity continuously scans AD for Kerberoastable SPNs, unconstrained delegation, AS-REP roastable accounts, stale privileged users, and passwords in attributes — scored by blast radius.
DCSync mimics a domain controller to pull all password hashes via AD replication. Singularity Identity sees the replication call in real time and fires an immediate high-fidelity alert.
Fake credentials planted in browsers, Credential Manager, keychain and password managers. Any attacker tool that reads and uses them generates a guaranteed true-positive alert — no tuning required.
Network-wide decoy hosts and services. Attackers doing lateral-movement recon encounter fake servers that look real; every interaction is a confirmed true positive with full forensics.
In an interview, always separate harden (finding misconfigs like Kerberoastable SPNs and unconstrained delegation), detect (real-time Kerberos/LDAP/replication alerts), and deceive (fake credentials and Hologram decoys). Candidates who only describe detection miss two-thirds of what Singularity Identity actually does.
Which AD misconfiguration lets an attacker request service tickets for offline cracking?
③ Detect & respond — catching credential attacks in real time
Detection in Singularity Identity is agent-based and happens on domain controllers, domain-joined endpoints, and cloud identity providers simultaneously. The most important attacks it catches in real time include:
- DCSync — an attacker impersonates a domain controller to pull password hashes from AD replication. Singularity Identity sees the replication call and fires an alert immediately.
- Pass-the-Hash / Pass-the-Ticket — reusing a stolen NTLM hash or Kerberos ticket to authenticate without knowing the password.
- Kerberoasting — requesting service tickets for Kerberoastable SPNs and cracking them offline.
- Golden Ticket / Silver Ticket — forging Kerberos tickets using a compromised KRBTGT hash to gain persistent, privileged access.
- AS-REP Roasting — extracting encrypted AS-REP responses for accounts with pre-auth disabled and cracking offline.
- LDAP reconnaissance — automated enumeration of AD users, groups, and OUs by attacker tooling like BloodHound.
When a detection fires, the agent can automatically respond: blocking the offending host from authenticating, isolating the endpoint, or injecting a deceptive response to mislead the attacker — without waiting for a human to act.
Priya at a Mumbai financial services firm faces this
The SOC gets an alert: an account named svc_backup is requesting service tickets for dozens of SPNs in the space of 30 seconds — classic Kerberoasting tooling behaviour.
svc_backup has an SPN registered and its password has not been rotated in over two years, making it a prime Kerberoasting target.
Singularity Identity fires a real-time Kerberoasting alert, shows the source host, the account and the list of targeted SPNs. AD posture also flags svc_backup as a long-stale, Kerberoastable account.
Singularity Console ▸ Identity Threats ▸ Kerberoasting Alert + AD Posture ▸ Exposure DetailIsolate the source endpoint immediately via automated response, reset svc_backup to a 25+ character random password (make it uncrackable), remove the SPN if not needed, and review all other service accounts flagged Kerberoastable in the posture report.
Re-check AD posture: svc_backup no longer appears in the Kerberoastable list; no further ticket-request spikes appear in identity telemetry.
MFA stops password spraying and phishing logins. It does nothing against Pass-the-Hash, DCSync, Golden Ticket or Kerberoasting — because those attacks bypass the authentication UI entirely and abuse the Kerberos or NTLM protocol directly. ITDR is the layer that catches them.
▶ Watch a Kerberoasting attack get caught and disrupted
An attacker inside the network tries to harvest service-ticket hashes. Press Play for the full detection path, then Break it to see the classic blind spot.
An attacker uses a compromised KRBTGT hash to forge a Kerberos ticket granting persistent Domain Admin access. Which attack is this?
④ Deceive & disrupt — fake credentials, decoys and the Hologram network
Deception is Singularity Identity's most distinctive capability. The platform plants deceptive credentials in the places attackers harvest them: browser credential stores, Windows Credential Manager, macOS keychain, and password managers. The moment an attacker's tool reads one of these fake entries and tries to use it, Singularity Identity fires a high-fidelity alert — no tuning, no false positives, because no legitimate user ever touches a deceptive credential.
Singularity Hologram — network-wide decoys
Singularity Hologram extends deception beyond credentials to the network layer. It projects fake hosts, services and data across the environment — so when an attacker does lateral-movement reconnaissance they encounter decoy servers that look real but lead nowhere productive. Every interaction with a Hologram decoy is a guaranteed true positive.
The combined effect: an attacker who evades initial detection by using a legitimate stolen credential will eventually touch a fake one, trigger the deception layer, and expose their full attack path — giving the SOC a complete picture for containment and forensics.
Unlike behavioural detections that need tuning, any interaction with a Singularity Hologram decoy or a deceptive credential is guaranteed malicious. Treat these alerts as P1 escalations — they mean an attacker is actively doing reconnaissance or lateral movement inside the network right now.
Why do deceptive credentials produce zero false positives?
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📖 Glossary
- ITDR
- Identity Threat Detection and Response — a security discipline for detecting and responding to attacks that abuse identity systems like AD and Entra ID in real time.
- DCSync
- An attack where an adversary impersonates a domain controller to pull all password hashes via the AD replication protocol (MS-DRSR).
- Kerberoasting
- Requesting Kerberos service tickets for accounts with SPNs, then cracking the ticket's encrypted hash offline to recover the service account password.
- Golden Ticket
- A forged Kerberos TGT created with the KRBTGT account hash, granting persistent, near-unrestricted access to the domain.
- AS-REP Roasting
- Exploiting AD accounts with Kerberos pre-authentication disabled — the encrypted AS-REP response can be cracked offline without knowing the password.
- Deceptive credential
- A fake credential planted by Singularity Identity in browser stores, Credential Manager or keychains. Any attacker tool that uses it generates a guaranteed true-positive alert.
- Singularity Hologram
- SentinelOne's network-wide deception layer — fake hosts, services and data that trap attackers during lateral-movement reconnaissance.
- Unconstrained delegation
- An AD setting that allows a service to impersonate any user to any other service — a high-risk misconfiguration that attackers abuse for privilege escalation.
- Identity attack surface
- The set of AD and Entra ID misconfigurations and over-permissioned accounts that an attacker could exploit to escalate privileges or move laterally.
- Pass-the-Hash
- Reusing a stolen NTLM password hash to authenticate as a user without knowing the plaintext password.
📚 Sources
- SentinelOne — Singularity Identity product page: real-time ITDR for Active Directory and Entra ID. sentinelone.com/platform/identity/
- SentinelOne — Singularity Identity datasheet: key features, AD hardening, deception and automated response. sentinelone.com/resources/datasheets/singularity-identity/
- SentinelOne — Singularity Identity for Identity Providers (Entra ID, Okta, Ping, Duo, SecureAuth). sentinelone.com/resources/datasheets/singularity-identity-for-identity-providers/
- SentinelOne Blog — Exit Sandman: how SentinelOne deflects APT-level identity security risks. sentinelone.com/blog/exit-sandman-how-sentinelone-deflects-apt-level-identity-security-risks/
- SentinelOne — Stop Identity-Based Attacks with Deception (webinar). sentinelone.com/resources/webinars/deception-the-secret-weapon-against-identity-based-attacks/
- AlJammaz Technologies — SentinelOne Singularity Identity: Real-Time ITDR for Active Directory Protection. al-jammaz.com/knowledge-center/real-time-identity-threat-detection-response-offered-by-singularity-identity-from-sentinelone
What's next?
Solid on identity? Next, map the full Singularity XDR platform — how the EDR agent, Ranger network discovery, Cloud Workload Security and Singularity Identity feed into one correlated storyline in the Singularity console.