Active Directory account lifecycle auditing tracks user accounts from creation through modification to deletion, allowing security teams to spot risky changes before attackers can exploit them. It provides clear visibility into who did what (logins, permission changes, group additions or removals), when it happened, and where it originated.
More than basic event logging, lifecycle auditing connects these activities across the entire lifespan of an account. This context enables earlier anomaly detection, stronger policy enforcement, reduced attack surface, and simpler compliance with regulatory requirements.
What are the Active Directory Account Lifecycle Stages?
Active Directory account lifecycle auditing focuses on the pivotal moments when user accounts change, each being a potential exploit if not properly controlled. Below are the main Active Directory account lifecycle stages:
- User Account Creation: Creating new user accounts using programs like PowerShell or Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) is the initial step. The access levels, group memberships, and attributes like UPN, email, and password that are defined from the beginning are marked in this important phase. In order to prevent over-privileging, prevent shadow accounts, and preserve least-privilege security from the start, this step will ensure correctness through role-based provisioning and approval protocols.
- User Account Modification: The second phase defines the process that involves altering the details of the existing user accounts, for instance, changing the names, email addresses, department details, or permissions through ADUC. It is a crucial step since changes can unintentionally result in granting too many privileges or making it difficult to find unauthorized changes made by attackers. Auditing allows verifying that alterations correspond to the requirements of the business, thus, detecting privilege creep at the very beginning and maintaining account integrity throughout the network.
- User Account Deactivation: The last stage is about the discontinuation or removal of user accounts through Disable, Removable, or policy- based expiration when the access is no longer needed. It is essential to get rid of inactive accounts that attackers can use for their substance. Monitoring events are a way of ensuring offboarding processes are followed, thereby lowering the attack surface and maintaining cleanliness and keeping the AD environment secure.
What Key Activities Are Audited During the Account Lifecycle?
The main activities that revolve around the monitoring of the AD lifecycle and generate security log entries on domain controllers.
1. Account Management
This is one of the primary activities audited, as it tracks changes made to user and computer accounts in Active Directory. The process begins with account creation for users and computers, where logs capture the target account name, UPN, security identifier (SID), password requirements, the creator’s security identifier and account name, originating domain and workstation, and the exact timestamp.
Deletion events record the identity of the deleted account (name and SID), the actor who performed the deletion, the source system, and the timestamp, providing full traceability for account removal activities. Enabling and disabling events show account status changes along with the source workstation or IP address and time, allowing unauthorized account reactivation to be detected. Renaming events capture old and new account names and SIDs, while lockout and unlock events record failure counts, lockout duration, and the identity of the account or administrator that performed the unlock.
This auditing helps prevent shadow accounts, enforces proper offboarding, and detects bulk or automated account operations that may indicate compromise preparation when configured through the Audit Account Management policy for Success and Failure.
Below are the Event IDs in Event Viewer that should be monitored:
- Event ID 4720: When a user account is created in Active Directory.
- Event ID 4722: Shows when a user account is enabled.
- Event ID 4725: Shows when a user account is disabled.
- Event ID 4726: Shows when a user account is deleted.
2. Logon/Logoff
This records and tracks every authentication attempt, differentiating successes and failures to establish a baseline of regular vs. potentially malicious activities.
Successful logons record details including logon type, source address, target account, and session identifiers used for investigation and correlation. Failure attempts are also fetching failure reason codes, repeated counts, and source details for brute force patterns. Logoff and explicit logoff initiations mark the time of session ends with duration and token info.
Enabling the ‘Audit Logon/Logoff’ policy helps track abnormal authentication behavior by recording successful and failed logon attempts, which can be correlated to detect credential misuse, repeated authentication failures, and logons occurring outside normal usage patterns.
Below are the following Event Ids in event viewer that need to be audited:
- Event ID 4624: Whenever an account is successfully logged on.
- Event ID 4647: When an account is successfully logged off.
- Event ID 4634: Log On Session End Time.
- Event ID 4800: System was locked.
- Event ID 4901: System was unlocked.
3. Group Membership
Activities related to group membership focus on the security and access dynamics of Active Directory by auditing additions, removals, and scope changes within security and distribution groups. Each event records the target group’s name and SID, scope and type, the affected member’s user or computer name and SID, associated account and domain, and the originating workstation.
This auditing includes nested group changes, which are critical for identifying the shortest privilege paths to Domain Admins. When enabled through the Audit Group Management policy, these events expose privilege creep, where users gradually accumulate elevated access, and help detect attacker activity such as backdoor group memberships or stealth privilege escalation. High-privilege groups, including Enterprise Admins, should be prioritized for real-time monitoring.
Below are the following Event Ids in event viewer that need to be checked:
- Event ID 4727: A security group is created.
- Event ID 4728: A member is added to a security group.
- Event ID 4729: A member is removed from a security enabled group.
- Event ID 4730: A security group is deleted.
4. Password Changes
The password change events encompass all actions related to passwords, such as users changing their own passwords, administrators resetting passwords, and modification of attributes like “Password Never Expires”.
The logs include details such as the security identifier (SID) / name of the target account, the SID /workstation of the subject who performed the action, the last bad password count, and flags like “users must change password at next logon”. These events clearly separate self-service password changes from administrative resets, supporting accountability, review processes, and compliance requirements for credential management.
The “Audit Account Management” feature used for monitoring can also detect mass resets, insider threat, or policy bypasses that result in weakened security measures thus, being a vital component in compliance with password rotation control requirements.
Below are the following Event Ids in event viewer that need to be checked:
- Event ID 4723: Where a user can change their own account password.
- Event ID 4724: To reset an account’s password by an administrator.
5. Policy Changes
The focus is on Group Policy objects (GPO) changes, such as the recording of creation/deletion, attribute edits, and permission changes. The events capture the GPO distinguished name, the affected OU/container, the changed properties, old/new values in detail. The “Audit Directory Service Changes” policy is a shield for changes to the Default Domain Policy and other baselines, which could be used to turn off auditing or escalate rights across the domain. Additionally, it detects minor attacks that alter Kerberos settings or weaken password complexity.
Below are the following Event Ids in event viewer that need to be checked:
- Event ID 5136: A directory service object was successfully modified.
- Event ID 5137: A directory service object was successfully created.
- Event ID 5138: A directory service object was successfully undeleted.
- Event ID 5139: A directory service object was successfully moved.
- Event ID 5141: A directory service object was successfully deleted.
Why is Account Lifecycle Auditing Critical?
The following are some of the reasons why auditing the Active Directory account lifecycle is essential:
- Security: In an era of credential stuffing, auditing detects compromised accounts via anomalous logons, unauthorized modifications, privilege abuse like shadow admin creation and lateral movement through group (4728 to Domain Admins). Audits verify that the accounts of employees or contractors who have left the company are promptly deactivated, thus shutting down a very significant, if not the most, potential way that unauthorized access and data breaches can occur.Auditing is a way to implement the least privilege rule, which means that users will only have as much access as it is necessary for their job function. By keeping an eye on what users do and what they are allowed to do, audits become a means of catching and stopping those who may want to commit illegal actions or tamper with data and who are, in fact, authorized users.
- Compliance: Most large- scale regulations and standards in the industry, mandate that access rights be strictly controlled and that audit trails be kept in detail. Audits create detailed logs and reports of all access activities, which can be shown by the organization to regulators as evidence that it is implementing its policies and the required standards.Non compliance with these regulations may lead to heavy fines and legal problems. The existence of a comprehensive, secure audit trail that tracks every user action in the system guarantees transparency and accountability.
- Risk Reduction: Auditing is one of the ways on how stale or inactive accounts that attackers often exploit as easy entry points or persistent footholds are eliminated. Auditing facilitates automated detection and cleanup of these dormant assets, accommodates routine reviews for hygiene maintenance, and, in general, reduces the potential attack surface.Besides, proper access controls enforced from the very beginning prevent, among other things, excessive permissions that could be utilised to increase the impact of security incidents like widespread compromises.
- Incident Response: As a result of the security breach, detailed audit logs represent the primary source of essential evidence for the investigations that enable the teams to reconstruct event timelines, determine how the attackers gained initial access, track their movements through the system, and evaluate the duration of their undetected operation. Accurate logs with uniform details such as timestamps, locations, and identifiers facilitate response actions considerably, thus giving organizations a chance to recover quicker and restrict the extent of the damage.
How is Active Directory Account Lifecycle Auditing Done
1. Enable the Auditing
Active Directory lifecycle auditing is enabled through Advanced Audit Policy Configuration and must be applied to domain controllers. Auditing is typically configured via the Default Domain Controllers Policy or a dedicated GPO linked to the Domain Controllers OU to ensure consistent logging across all DCs.
- Go to Start Menu → Administrative Tools → Group Policy Management.
- In the left pane, navigate to Forest → Domains → Domain Name. Expand it.
- You can select either ‘Default Domain Policy’ or create a new Group Policy Object.
- Right-click on ‘Default Domain Policy’ or other Group Policy Object.
- Click ‘Edit’ in the context menu. It shows ‘Group Policy Management Editor’.
- Go to Computer Configuration → Policies → Windows Settings → Security Settings → Advanced Audit Policy Configuration → Audit Policies.
- Set the following audit policies: Audit account management: “Success”, Audit directory service access: “Success”, Audit logon events: “Success” and “Failure”
2. Search Relevant Event IDs in Event Viewer
The Event Viewer is the native solution for reviewing security logs. It is free and is included in the administrative tools package of every Microsoft Windows system. After Active Directory auditing is enabled, Windows servers write events to the security log on the domain controller. Event Viewer requires admins to learn the specific event ID numbers they want to search for or filter by, which makes the monitoring of changes to AD objects even more complex. However, different types of events have different schema that has been discussed above.
Conclusion
It is a difficult task to use native auditing to get a summary of logon events on your network. Finding the Event ID and looking at each event’s attributes separately would be extremely challenging for an administrator.
An easier way to keep track of logon events is to use the Lepide Auditor for Active Directory. Lepide provides important details regarding changes to user accounts in Active Directory, such as the creation, deletion, locking out, disabling, and name changes of user accounts. All of this data is displayed in reports that are simple to read, searchable, filterable, and sortable.
How Lepide Helps
Lepide Auditor for Active Directory uses intuitive dashboards to transform raw event data into actionable security intelligence. The platform continuously monitors for potential threats and provides real-time alerts when high-risk changes occur, such as modifications to administrative group memberships, with notifications delivered via email or the console.
Lepide also supports threshold-based alerting, enabling detection of anomalous activity—such as multiple account lockouts within a defined timeframe—before it escalates into a security incident. In addition, the platform offers change tracking reports that clearly show before-and-after states, along with ready-to-use compliance reports aligned to regulatory standards, eliminating the need to manually parse millions of log entries.
Now that you understand what Active Directory account lifecycle auditing is, put it into practice. Book a free demo with one of our engineers or start the free trial to see how Lepide helps you monitor every critical event in real time.
FAQs
Q1. Can I audit AD using only native tools?
Ans. Yes, but manual Event Viewer reviews don’t scale, automation is essential for real-time alerts and compliance reporting.
Q2. When should a dedicated auditing tool be used?
Ans. When manual log review becomes unmanageable, real-time alerts are needed, or regular compliance reports need to be generated.
Q3. How does lifecycle auditing help with compliance?
Ans. It provides auditable evidence of who accessed what and when, supporting frameworks like ISO 27001, SOC 2, and NIST.
