What are Directory Services?
Directory Services are the foundational infrastructure of enterprise identity management essentially a structured database that holds information about every user, computer, application, and resource in an organization and defines how they relate to one another. When a user logs into the network, directory services verify their credentials and retrieve their access permissions. Microsoft Active Directory is the most widely deployed directory service, while LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is the standard protocol used to communicate with directory services. As organizations move to the cloud, directory services have evolved into cloud-based solutions like Microsoft Entra ID that can manage identities across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.