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Audit Active Directory groups by recording what they are, who or what belongs to them, who owns them, and what change evidence is available. Treat an empty, old, or apparently quiet group as a candidate for investigation—not proof that it is unused. Microsoft’s cleanup guidance validates candidates with staged checks for cloud, Kerberos, and LDAP use, including controlled “scream tests” where appropriate.
What a useful group audit should establish
A group inventory is a snapshot of directory objects and their membership; it is not a complete account of every application or service dependency. Keep these evidence types distinct: directory queries show current objects, audit logs show recorded changes, and Windows logon auditing shows group information in a logon token on specified computers. None alone proves that a group is or is not used everywhere.
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- Identity and classification: record the group’s distinguished name and SID where available, its category (security or distribution), scope, domain, and collection date.
- Membership: capture members as directory objects, including their types—not just a count of human users.
- Accountability and context: note an owner or responsible team, associated application or service, and relevant GPO, server, scheduled job, or service-account records available in your environment.
- Change evidence: record available creation or modification information and the source from which it was obtained.
- Decision trail: preserve evidence reviewed, owner decision, approvals, change record, and a post-change snapshot.
Build and review the inventory
1. Set scope and preserve a baseline
Define the domain and OUs in scope, the review period, and the domain controller queried. Distinguish security groups from distribution groups and record the collection date. Export stable identifiers, group category and scope, membership, and relevant metadata before proposing changes.
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2. Inspect the member object types
Do not treat a member count as a usage verdict. Microsoft’s AD DS group cleanup guidance notes that computers can indicate Group Policy or System Center administration. Contacts and users or groups excluded from Entra synchronization also need context-specific review. A group containing users or groups synchronized to Entra warrants cloud-use validation. These are cues for follow-up, not proof of use or disuse.
3. Check age and operational context
Compare available group creation or change information with records for its owner, application, servers, scheduled jobs, GPOs, and service accounts. Microsoft’s cleanup method uses a group’s change date as part of triage, then proceeds to usage tests. It does not set a universal age or inactivity cutoff that establishes a group is unused.
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Validate candidate groups before removal
Use staged scream tests carefully
Microsoft describes a scream test as temporarily making a possibly unnecessary resource unavailable and waiting to learn whether anyone is affected. Its AD DS cleanup workflow stages checks for cloud usage, then Kerberos and LDAP application usage. A test can expose a dependency, but only within the test’s scope and observation period.
Before a test, coordinate with service owners, communicate the change, identify what will be monitored, choose an observation window that covers relevant workload cycles, and prepare a rollback plan. Record the candidate, test scope, start and end, observed effects, owner decisions, and rollback outcome. The appropriate duration depends on local applications and business cycles; Microsoft’s guidance does not prescribe one universal window. Its cited procedure addresses a single AD DS domain and does not replace broader forest, application, change-control, or recovery planning.
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Use access reviews to gather accountable decisions
Microsoft Entra access reviews can support recurring membership review. Microsoft recommends regular reviews and notes that group owners are often well placed to decide who still needs access. For an on-premises synchronized group, choose reviewers who understand the AD group: synchronized groups cannot have an Entra owner.
Access reviews can inform decisions about synchronized groups, but cannot directly change their membership. As Microsoft states in its access review planning guidance, “Access reviews can’t change the membership of groups that you synchronize from on-premises AD with Microsoft Entra Connect.” AD remains the source of authority, so apply approved membership changes there. Review results can be downloaded or retrieved programmatically for administrators to act on.
What audit logs and Windows events can—and cannot—show
Entra directory audit logs
Get-EntraAuditDirectoryLog retrieves Entra directory audit records, including group-management activity. Its documentation shows filtering for the “Add member to group” activity and documents supported least-privileged roles and the AuditLog.Read.All and Directory.Read.All scopes in examples. These are Entra audit records, not a substitute for on-premises AD change auditing.
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Windows Audit Group Membership
Windows Audit Group Membership records group information present in a user’s logon token on the computer where the session is created; Audit Logon must also be enabled. Events are generated on the logon computer for interactive logons and on the resource-hosting computer for network logons. See Microsoft’s Audit Group Membership guidance. This evidence can help show group context at logon, but it does not record every possible dependency or establish that every dependent service used—or did not use—a group.
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Decide what to do with findings
| Evidence | What it helps establish | What it does not establish | Change authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| AD directory inventory via Get-ADGroup | Current group identity, properties, and requested membership within the query’s scope. | Complete historical changes or every application dependency. | Administrators with appropriate permissions can make changes in AD. |
| Entra directory audit records | Recorded Entra directory activity, such as group-management events, subject to available log coverage. | On-premises AD change history or universal group-use telemetry. | Entra records provide evidence; they do not make an AD-sourced group’s membership change authoritative. |
| Windows Audit Group Membership | Group information in a logon token on the relevant computer, with Audit Logon enabled. | Every group dependency across all systems, or proof of non-use. | Provides observations, not a group-removal workflow. |
| Entra access review | Reviewer decisions about whether people still need access, including decisions that can inform synchronized-group remediation. | Direct modification of groups synchronized from on-premises AD. | For AD-sourced groups, apply approved changes at the on-premises source of authority. |
Use the evidence together, then require an accountable owner decision and an approved change plan. An empty list, old timestamp, quiet log, or uneventful observation period can justify further investigation; none is a universal deletion rule. For synchronized groups, preserve the authority boundary and make the actual AD change on-premises.
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