Cohesity & Semperis launch solution to defend Active Directory
Cohesity and Semperis have launched Cohesity Identity Resilience, a new solution designed to help organisations defend against identity-based cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure such as Microsoft Active Directory and Entra ID systems.
Active Directory plays a central role in managing authentication and access within enterprise IT environments, making it a frequent target for cybercriminals. According to Cohesity and Semperis, a compromise of Active Directory often results in attackers gaining broad access to resources, enabling actions such as ransomware deployment, data theft, and disruption of essential business operations.
Solution details
The newly announced Cohesity Identity Resilience enables organisations to proactively secure, recover, and investigate incidents relating to identity systems across hybrid enterprise environments. Developed through a collaboration between Cohesity and Semperis, the solution integrates Semperis' identity security technology with Cohesity's data security platform to deliver multi-layer protection and automated response against advanced cyber threats. The product extends protection beyond on-premises Active Directory, including Microsoft Entra ID in cloud environments, and provides capabilities to protect and recover identity objects across the entire Active Directory and Entra ID landscape.
"Identity Security is one of the key battlegrounds of cyberattacks for enterprises and governments. They need solutions that combine prevention, resilience, and recovery without adding complexity to their existing cyber resilience strategy," said Sanjay Poonen, Chief Executive Officer, Cohesity. "Cohesity Identity Resilience delivers a modern, proven approach that helps organizations protect the foundation of their digital operations, so they can recover quickly from even the most critical attacks on identity infrastructures and remain cyber resilient. We're excited to partner with Semperis on this effort."
The solution features proactive hardening of Active Directory by scanning for indicators of exposure, providing risk scores, remediation guidance, and prioritisation of attack paths that could lead to critical assets. It includes secure, immutable backups and cyber vaulting for isolation of Active Directory data, ensuring that recovery processes are protected from attack. In addition to supporting rapid and secure restoration of Active Directory environments following a cyber incident, it offers forensic and incident response capabilities that aim to remove attacker artefacts and confirm system integrity before returning to production operations.
Organisations benefit from comprehensive post-attack forensic support, including incident analysis within defined windows and validation of Active Directory's trustworthiness. This minimises downtime and delivers a structured approach to recovering from identity-based breaches.
Industry perspectives
"Active Directory compromises are devastating because they give attackers so many paths to take advantage of critical systems," said Mickey Bresman, Chief Executive Officer, Semperis. "By partnering with Cohesity, we're integrating our industry-leading Active Directory technology with the broadly adopted Cohesity Data Cloud, ensuring the world's largest global organizations have a trusted, streamlined path to protect against and recover from even the most sophisticated identity-based attacks."
"Active Directory compromises often turn into prolonged business disruptions that are costly and difficult to contain," said Scott Harrison, Director, Hybrid Infrastructure Solutions, CDW. "With Cohesity Identity Resilience, powered by Semperis, we see a solution that directly addresses this gap - helping enterprises strengthen defenses, recover quickly, and maintain confidence in their core identity systems. It's the kind of capability our customers have been asking for, and it represents an important step forward in building true cyber resilience."
Industry experts note that identity-based attacks can impact a wide range of sectors, from manufacturing to healthcare and public services. Christophe Laakmann, AVP Partners, EMEA at Semperis, commented, "Downtime caused by identity-based attacks isn't just disruptive, it can halt production lines, impact patient care, and interrupt critical services. With Cohesity Identity Resilience powered by Semperis, organizations now have a way to harden Active Directory against these threats, recover rapidly when attacks occur, and maintain trust in their most essential systems."
Stéphane Arnaudo, Senior Director, Channel Sales Europe at Cohesity, added, "With Cohesity Identity Resilience, we offer our partners and their customers a market leading solution that combines proactive protection, rapid recovery and post-incident analysis. With cyber attacks increasingly targeting Active Directory systems, this integrated approach enables our ecosystem to strengthen the resilience of its hybrid environments, while simplifying management and reducing risks."
Technical features
The solution's technical approach includes scanning for risk and exposure indicators across Active Directory environments, securing backups in isolated vaults, and supporting recovery at both local and cloud levels. By cleansing systems of malicious artefacts and enabling forensic investigation, Cohesity Identity Resilience aims to restore operations while preserving system trust.
The collaboration between Cohesity and Semperis, established in 2024, forms the basis of this offering as organisations look for ways to address the growing complexity and persistence of identity-based security threats. The solution is currently available for purchase through Cohesity channels globally.
