The PowerShell Podcast

Andrew sits down with Evgenij Smirnov, a Berlin-based IT veteran with 30 years of experience in Active Directory and security consulting, to dig into what actually gets organizations popped. Evgenij walks through the most common escalation paths he sees in real-world AD environments, including over-permissioned accounts, exposed certificate authorities, and unencrypted domain controller backups, and explains how attackers chain these together to produce golden tickets and gain god-mode access. The conversation covers why these misconfigurations keep happening (bad defaults, lazy vendors, and a long history of "just click next"), how PowerShell fits into both hardening and attack scenarios, and what proper tier isolation actually looks like when you implement it with both authentication policies and user rights assignments. Evgenij also introduces his book, Building Modern Active Directory, and makes the case for treating security not as a chapter you can skip, but as something baked into the design from day one.
 
Key Takeaways:

The most common Active Directory escalation paths are not sophisticated. Over-permissioned accounts with ACL chains to DC sync, exposed certificate authorities, and unencrypted backup tapes are consistently the entry points attackers exploit. If you can find these first, you are already ahead of most threat actors.

Tier isolation done right requires both authentication policies and user rights assignment policies working together. Either technique alone leaves a blind spot that a determined attacker can walk through.

Cybersecurity is a team sport, and bad cybersecurity is too. Microsoft ships AD with questionable defaults, vendors demand domain admin for service accounts, and administrators make shortcuts under pressure. The fix is not one heroic hardening sprint; it is a culture of least privilege built into every decision from the start.

Guest Bio:
Evgenij Smirnov is a Principal Solutions Architect at Semperis and a Microsoft MVP in both Security and PowerShell since 2020. Based in Berlin, Germany, he has spent more than 30 years in IT and security consulting, with deep expertise in Active Directory, identity security, and hybrid infrastructure. He is a longtime community leader, running the PowerShell User Group Berlin and the Windows Server User Group Berlin, and a regular speaker at conferences including PSConfEU. He is the author of Building Modern Active Directory, published by Apress in 2024.
 
Resource Links:
Building Modern Active Directory (book site): ad2049.com
Evgenij's personal blog): it-pro-berlin.de
Evgenij on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/evgenijsmirnov
ADMF (Active Directory Management Framework) on GitHub: github.com/ActiveDirectoryManagementFramework/ADMF
ADMF documentation and project site: admf.one
Attack Scenario To Go: https://github.com/HerrHoZi/AS2Go
The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EQb7H6vBOtg

Andrew sits down with Fred Weinmann, one of the most prolific PowerShell module authors in the community, for part one of a multi-episode series covering his projects. This episode focuses on the Active Directory Management Framework, or ADMF, a configuration-driven system Fred originally built while working as a field engineer at Microsoft for a large enterprise customer managing hundreds of Active Directory forests.

Fred walks through the problem ADMF was designed to solve: Active Directory is notoriously hard to manage consistently across environments, and most organizations just accept the chaos as the cost of doing business. The old approach at this particular customer involved zipping up scripts, RDPing into domain controllers, and running them manually. ADMF changed that by borrowing the test/apply concept from Desired State Configuration, but making it flexible enough to handle the messiness of real-world AD environments.

The conversation covers how ADMF is structured around components (like organizational units) and contexts, why generating a reference configuration from an existing environment is harder than it sounds, the protocol juggling required to handle Group Policy and schema updates, and why Fred would use raw LDAP instead of the built-in AD commands if he were starting from scratch today. Fred also touches on the credential provider plugin system, which lets teams plug in their own password management workflows for things like break-glass accounts.

Key Takeaways:

ADMF follows a test-before-apply model borrowed from DSC, but trades DSC's all-or-nothing enforcement for a more selective, component-by-component approach that better fits the fluid reality of Active Directory management.

Generating a configuration from an existing AD environment is tempting but potentially counterproductive. If you auto-generate your desired state from a domain that's accumulated years of cruft, you're not capturing what you want, you're just freezing what already exists.

Performance at scale is a real consideration. The built-in Active Directory PowerShell module uses the AD Web Services protocol, which sends XML over the wire. Raw LDAP is significantly faster, and Fred says switching to it is the one architectural change he'd make if building ADMF over again.

Guest Bio:
Friedrich "Fred" Weinmann is a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft and one of the most recognized PowerShell community contributors working today. He is the creator of PSFramework, which underpins many other modules in the ecosystem, as well as tools like PSModuleDevelopment, PSUtil, and the Active Directory Management Framework. Fred is a frequent conference speaker, a longtime community collaborator, and someone Andrew credits with helping shape his own PowerShell journey.

Resource Links:

ADMF documentation and getting started guide: admf.one

ADMF on GitHub: github.com/ActiveDirectoryManagementFramework/ADMF

ADMF on PowerShell Gallery: powershellgallery.com/packages/ADMF

PSFramework (Fred's logging, configuration, and scripting infrastructure module): psframework.org

Fred Weinmann on GitHub: github.com/FriedrichWeinmann

Fred Weinmann on X: x.com/FredWeinmann

PDQ Community Discord: discord.gg/pdq
 
The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8SlIqUKP3hY

Jake Hildreth, Principal Security Consultant at Semperis and Microsoft MVP, is back on the podcast fresh off a trip to PowerShell Conference Europe, where he and Andrew co-presented a session on securing PowerShell. Jake also gave his own talk on Stepper, his open-source module for building resumable, step-by-step scripts — a tool that's grown considerably since his last appearance on the show. The two dig into what makes PSConf EU such a standout event, the refreshing lack of elitism in the PowerShell community, and the updates Jake's been shipping, including named steps, built-in logging, and secret suppression. The conversation winds into burnout, the importance of actually taking your vacation days, and how the same mindset that drives good automation — knowing when to stop and reset — applies to taking care of yourself.

Key Takeaways:

Stepper has gotten some meaningful quality-of-life updates since Jake last appeared on the show, including named steps, automatic logging, and the ability to suppress secrets from logs — making it more practical for real-world production scripts.

PSConf EU punches above its weight as a conference experience: technically deep but genuinely welcoming at every skill level, with none of the elitism that can creep into security-adjacent events.

Your vacation time is a benefit, not a backlog item. Jake makes the case that getting good at separating your work time from your off time isn't a soft skill — it's a sustainability practice.

Guest Bio:
Jake Hildreth is a Principal Security Consultant at Semperis, a Microsoft MVP in both PowerShell and Identity/Access, and a recovering sysadmin with 25 years of IT under his belt. He's probably best known for building Locksmith, the open-source AD CS auditing and remediation tool, but he's also the creator of Stepper, Deck, BlueTuxedo, and PowerPUG! — a suite of tools designed to make identity security a little less painful for the admins who live in it. When he's not untangling Kerberos or chasing down ADCS misconfigurations, he goes by "horse" in the PowerShell Discords.

Resource Links:

Jake Hildreth's Website: jakehildreth.com

Jake's GitHub: github.com/jakehildreth

Stepper (Resumable PowerShell Scripts): github.com/jakehildreth/Stepper

Locksmith (AD CS Auditing & Remediation): github.com/jakehildreth/Locksmith

Locksmith 2 (Next-Gen AD CS Toolkit): github.com/jakehildreth/…

PowerShell Conference Europe: psconf.eu

PDQ Discord: discord.gg/PDQ

The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Rqkuaeps_jM

Andrew sits down with Robert Prüst, a Netherlands-based Microsoft MVP, to geek out about Pester, AI-assisted coding, and the power of showing your work in the PowerShell community. Robert breaks down how Pester works as a testing framework (unit testing, integration testing, and mocking) and explains why testing is the key to trusting AI-generated code. They also dig into a Visual Studio Code extension Robert built for Azure DevOps, the conference culture around PSConf EU, and why community involvement matters as much as technical skill. The conversation wraps with some honest takes on imposter syndrome, learning in public, and the value of just getting started.

Key Takeaways:

Pester isn't just for unit testing your functions -- it scales all the way up to testing live infrastructure, validating Azure environments, and serving as the backbone of security tools like Maester. The more you invest in it, the more useful it gets.

AI-generated code needs a safety net, and Pester is exactly that. Testing gives sysadmins a way to verify what the code is actually doing, which is especially critical when you didn't write it yourself.

Imposter syndrome is almost universal in this community, and the people who feel it most are often the ones learning the most. Getting into community spaces -- online or in person -- is one of the fastest ways to grow.

Guest Bio:
Robert Prüst is a Microsoft MVP and MCT based in the Netherlands, focused on PowerShell, Azure automation, and DevOps. He has around 24 years of professional IT experience and has been working with PowerShell since roughly 2012. Robert is a regular speaker at PSConf EU, blogs at powershellpr0mpt.com, and is active on GitHub under the handle powershellpr0mpt. He runs a custom Azure Engineer bootcamp course and contributes to open source projects including the AMBA and EPAC frameworks.

Resource Links:

 Pester documentation: https://pester.dev

 Maester: https://maester.dev

 PSKoans: https://github.com/vexx32/PSKoans

 PSConfEU: https://psconf.eu

 PDQ Discord: https://discord.gg/pdq

Connect with Andrew: https://andrewpla.tech/links

Robert’s blog: https://powershellpr0mpt.com

Robert on GitHub: https://github.com/powershellpr0mpt

Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rprust/

The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7Z2Pk0y2Xss

Dan Adams is a 13-year Microsoft 365 and SharePoint veteran who joined Andrew to talk about the often misunderstood world of SharePoint, the shift to Microsoft Graph, and his custom PowerShell module built which can assess and benchmark M365 environments. Dan breaks down why SharePoint gets such a bad reputation (spoiler: it's usually about who built it, not the platform), explains why "everything in M365 is SharePoint" isn't just a meme, and digs into how the Microsoft Graph API is changing the way admins interact with the platform. He also shares his experience going from longtime podcast listener to first-time guest, and closes with some honest advice about reaching out to people in the community.

Key Takeaways:

SharePoint's bad reputation often comes from poor initial architecture, not the platform itself. Getting the information structure right at the start has downstream effects on everything from Copilot to Purview to legal compliance, and PowerShell automation is only as useful as the metadata you've set up to work with.

The Microsoft Graph API is consolidating how everything in M365 is accessed. Where older APIs like the SharePoint client-side object model might count a batch of 100 items as 100 separate API calls, Graph treats that same batch as a single call, which is a meaningful difference for performance and rate limiting.

Dan's custom PowerShell module (SP’r Smash Bros Automation) automates M365 permission extraction to produce security assessments against CIS benchmarks and Microsoft Secure Score. Built as a practical tool for consultants and admins, it delivers a fast, standardized baseline of a tenant's security posture, featuring an optional AI sidecar to instantly generate personalized remediation plans.

Guest Bio:

Dan Adams is a Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Architect with 13 years of M365 consulting experience. Leveraging deep SharePoint and strategic information architecture expertise, he has led teams to deliver over 40 Fortune 500 intranets across industries ranging from healthcare to the NFL. He is the architect behind multiple award-winning portals, including two Ragan "Best Overall Intranet" winners. Dan is also an AI enthusiast, an advanced PowerShell expert, and the creator of the custom "SP'r Smash Bros Automation" module for Microsoft 365.

Resource Links:

Dan Adams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-adams-10887650/

Dan Adams on Github: https://github.com/sprsmashbrosautomation

Connect with Andrew: https://andrewpla.tech/links

PnP PowerShell: https://pnp.github.io/powershell/

PDQ Discord Community: https://discord.gg/pdq

The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OLsTaKC9GmM

PowerShell Wednesday Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQT8lrn8hhU&list=PL1mL90yFExsix-L0havb8SbZXoYRPol0B