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We are Paramount Defenses

#1 in Privileged Access Assessment and Active Directory Security.

We are on a paramount mission to defend organizational security, national security and national sovereignty worldwide.

March 10, 2026 – Paramount Defenses releases Gold Finger 10.0, introducing the world's only accurate Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier [ Press Release: ]

"We are very pleased to see Paramount Defenses, a valued Microsoft partner, offer an innovative security solution (in Gold Finger) that helps enhance security and compliance in Active Directory environments."

Charles Coates, Senior Product Manager
Identity and Security Business Group

85% of organizations worldwide operate on Microsoft Active Directory.

Microsoft Active Directory is Foundational

Active Directory (AD) is the foundation of IT, cyber security and privileged access at 85+% of organizations worldwide.

Active Directory is the Heart of Privileged Access

Active Directory is the heart of Identity and Access Management (IAM), Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Zero Trust worldwide.

How to assess privileged access in Active Directory

Privileged Access Assessment in AD is Paramount

The "Keys to the Kingdom" and the keys to every asset lie in AD so knowing exactly who has what privileged access in AD is paramount.

We are Paramount Defenses

Microsoft Active Directory is the foundation of cyber security and privileged access at 85% of organizations worldwide.

Founded by former Microsoft Program Manager for Active Directory Security, we possess unrivaled expertise, IP and capability in the top two most critical areas of cyber security - Active Directory Security and Privileged Access.

We are on a paramount mission that impacts organizational cyber security, national security and national sovereignty.

We uniquely empower organizations worldwide to accurately assess and lockdown privileged access in Active Directory, the proverbial "Keys to the Kingdom", as well as to accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory.

These two essential capabilities are absolutely paramount for securing and defending Active Directory, and for attaining and maintaining least privilege access in Active Directory, a cardinal organizational cyber security imperative worldwide.

Technical Overview

The following is a technical overview of how our innovation, embodied in our Microsoft-endorsed products, delivers best-of-class solutions to vital Active Directory focused organizational cyber security needs and helps accomplish our paramount mission that today profoundly impacts organizations worldwide –

Active Directory

Active Directory is the Heart of Organizational Cyber Security.

At the heart of cyber security of 85% of organizations worldwide lies Active Directory, the bedrock of their autonomy.

At these organizations, all primary identities (domain user accounts), hosts (domain-joined computers) and security groups are stored and managed in Active Directory, and secured by an ocean of Active Directory security permissions that collectively determine who has what access on them.

Consequently, Active Directory is also at the very heart of virtually all vital organizational cyber security areas, including Privileged Access Management (PAM), Least Privilege Access (LPA), Privileged Account Discovery, Threat Intelligence, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Active Directory Security.

The successful fulfillment of the requirements posed by each one of these vital areas of organizational cyber security invariably involves and necessitates the need to accurately assess exactly who has what access in Active Directory.

Thus, the key to fufilling the requirements of each one of these areas of cyber security lies in being able to accurately assess exactly who has what access in Active Directory, making this fundamental determination paramount to security.

Remarkably and astonishingly, due to the sheer and daunting complexity of Active Directory's security model, it turns out that accurately making this very determination i.e. exactly who has what access in Active Directory is extremely difficult.

Accurate Access Assessment is Very Difficult

A Daunting Technical Challenge for Organizatons worldwide.

The accurate assessment of exactly who has what access in Active Directory is extremely difficult and in fact, it is the #1 challenge in Active Directory Security and in all of organizational cyber security today.

It is very difficult because to accurately identify exactly who has what access in Active Directory, one needs to accurately determine effective permissions in Active Directory, and that is painstaking, laborious, error-prone and time-consuming.

To accurately determine effective permissions in Active Directory, organizational IT and cyber security personnel need to acquire sufficient proficiency in Active Directory security and then apply such expertise towards accurately making these determinations, taking into account all factors that influence access in Active Directory, and do so with 100% accuracy.

These factors include numerous components of Active Directory's complex security model - access control lists (ACLs), inheritance of permissions, precedence orders, conflicting permissions (Allow vs Deny), group membership, expansions and nesting, Schema constraints, all security permissions (generic permissions, extended rights, validated writes) etc.

The accurate determination of effective permissions in Active Directory and in turn the accurate assessment of exactly who has what access in Active Directory are amongst the most complex of technical challenges today.

Gold Finger

Accurate Active Directory Access Assesment at a button's touch.

Our industry-leading, innovative, patented effective access assessment technology is embodied in our unique, unrivaled Microsoft-endorsed Gold Finger privileged access assessment and privilege escalation path identification solution.

Gold Finger is the only solution in the world that can accurately determine effective permissions/access in Active Directory, and thus fully automates the accurate assessment of exactly who has what access in Active Directory.

It can instantly and automatically analyze millions of security permissions in and across Active Directory and accurately assess exactly who has what access, where and how, domain-wide in Active Directory, all at a button's touch.

It can also accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, an almost impossible feat, at a button's touch.

Gold Finger is architected by former Microsoft Program Manager for Active Directory Security, endorsed by Microsoft, and is the outcome of over a decade of pioneering research and development.

In essence, Gold Finger is the world's only solution that can accurately and automatically assess exactly who has what access in Active Directory, where and how, domain-wide, as well as identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory, empowering organizations to attain LPA in Active Directory and fulfill many Active Directory focused cyber security needs.

Charles Coates, Senior Product Manager
Identity and Security Business Group

Least Privileged Access in Active Directory

Easily Attain and Maintain Least Privilege Access in Active Directory

All building blocks of organizational cyber security i.e. accounts, credentials and groups are stored in Active Directory, so attaining and maintaining least privilege access (LPA) in Active Directory is paramount to organizational cyber security.

To attain and maintain LPA in Active Directory, organizations, first and foremost, need to be able to accurately assess exactly who has what access in AD, because to lock-down access, one first needs to know who has what access.

Unfortunately, there exist thousands of complicated security permissions (e.g. explicit, inherited, allow, deny, object-specfic, special rights etc.) in every Active Directory and they make it very difficult to accurately assess who currently has what access, in turn making it very difficult to lock-down access, and thus to attain and maintain LPA in Active Directory.

Gold Finger can instantly, automatically and accurately determine who has what access, domain-wide, on thousands of Active Directory objects, based on the accurate determination of effective permissions, solving the problem of accurately assessing who has what access in Active Directory, and making this very difficult process as easy as touching a button.

It also identifies and pinpoints the exact underlying permissions and group memberships that enable all identified access.

By automating the accurate assessment of who has what access, where and how in Active Directory, it lets organizations easily assess and lockdown access, thus easily attain and maintain last privilege access (LPA) in Active Directory.

Active Directory Privilege Escalation Path Identifier

Accurately Identify Privilege Escalation Paths in Active Directory

The #1 cyber security risk to organizations operating on Active Directory is Active Directory Privilege Escalation, because it provides perpetrators the opportunity to quickly gain and exploit the most powerful privileged access in an organization.

Consequently, the need to accurately identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in Active Directory is paramount.

Our innovative Microsoft-endorsed Gold Finger solution, powered by patented access-assessment technology, also uniquely empowers organizations operating on AD to accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory.

It is the world's only tooling can accurately identify privilege escalation paths in Active Directory because it is the world's only tooling that bases its determinations on the accurate determination of effective permissions in Active Directory.

It can instantly and accurately identify and reveal exactly who has privilege escalation paths to an Active Directory object, how they can escalate their privilege and which underlying security permissions enable these privilege escalation paths.

The availability of such valuable cyber security intelligence can finally empower organizations worldwide to be able to easily, quickly and trustworthily (accurately) identify and eliminate privilege escalation paths in Active Directory.