
Active Directory Security Assessment for Banks: Examiner Expectations, Real Cost, and the Findings That Reach the Wire Room
Every federally supervised bank and credit union faces an identity-infrastructure risk a generic assessment never tests: the path from a compromised teller workstation through Active Directory to the core banking platform and the wire room. An attacker who Kerberoasts a Fiserv or Jack Henry service account whose password has not changed since deployment does not just hold a domain account, they hold the credentials that run the bank's transaction engine. From there, Domain Admin to a wire-room jump host can take under 40 minutes on a typical community-bank forest. This post lays out the bank-specific AD assessment model that closes examiner Matters Requiring Attention and satisfies the evidence burden for FFIEC safety-and-soundness IT examinations, the GLBA Safeguards Rule periodic-testing requirement, NYDFS 23 NYCRR Part 500 privileged-access obligations, NCUA ACET controls, and SOX IT general controls for publicly traded institutions. It explains what makes bank forests structurally different: core banking service accounts wired into Fiserv, Jack Henry, and FIS with passwords unchanged since go-live; MSP and vendor RMM agents running under standing Domain Admin; wire-room jump hosts reachable from a teller workstation through a single BloodHound path; and bidirectional trusts inherited from acquisitions with SID filtering disabled and stale privileged accounts still live. It details the toolset (PingCastle, BloodHound CE, PurpleKnight, plus a manual core-platform service-account inventory), the deliverable structure that satisfies both the IT remediation team and the examiner evidence package, the four delivery models aligned to banking triggers (MRA response, pre-exam prep, quarterly retainer, post-M and A integration), the 60-day remediation and examiner-evidence timeline, and fixed-fee pricing tiers for community banks, regional banks, and multi-charter holding companies. Six FAQ entries on hybrid Entra ID scope, pentest vs assessment, auditor access, internal vs external delivery, re-assessment cadence, and data-collection safety.






































































































![ISAE 3402 Type 1 vs Type 2: Complete Guide [2026] | Atlant Security ISAE 3402 Type 1 vs Type 2: Complete Guide [2026] | Atlant Security](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fblog%2Fdemystifying-isae-3402-type-1-and-type-2-reports-and-audits.jpg&w=828&q=75)






































































































































































































































