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Challenges with legacy Microsoft Environments

 

After several years I have noticed a trend within companies running Microsoft Infrastructure environments. I would most definitely say that there exists a challenge for the respective internal IT team to implement best practices and to achieve the optimal setup. Quite frequently I have noticed that there tends to be non-optimal implementations, possibly due to lack of time or otherwise being overwhelmed by internal demands associated with the solution complexity.

 

Businesses need to appreciate the all-round importance of IT, and the resulting dependence of their required business outcome an their selected IT strategy. IT should be the foundation/baseline across all departments in an enterprise, whilst being properly aligned with the Business Strategy, in order to provide the lowest cost and best performance combination and at the desired service level. When this does not happen, we typically find that IT departments are being treated as the “expense” department, and we do not want that right? Usually people from other departments think that “IT” is just their “computer”, “Outlook”, or their “File Server files”, when in reality, the IT back office, as implemented based upon the best practice and optimal setup, is where the magic happens without the user’s knowledge.

 

Active Directory administration takes a big chunk of responsibility in every client environment, a good slice of the SMB market uses the default setup of Active Directory. To have an ADDS (Active Directory Domain Services) environment you require proper capacity planning, OU structure design, GPO’s to automate and enhance the security, Sites and Services with subnets configured and so on… If we extend the conversation to other Microsoft solutions, I can write several articles explaining how impressive companies have been working for years with such solutions and in the majority of the cases, blaming the solution for not working as it was expected, while in truth it is how it was implemented to begin with.

 

Same thing applies for the Windows 10 endpoints, companies tend to ignore the “Endpoint” security and its importance, while investing thousands on Firewall solutions. This would be similar to having big bulletproof doors to protect your house while you keep the window open. Funny right? In the past 2 years we have seen an impressive growth of Ransomware attacks that costed dozens of millions of dollars on ransom recovery, besides reputation losses, stock losses associated with these attacks (Who watched Mr. Robot series here to remember what happened to Evil Corp?). Imagine having all your critical data encrypted, taking from 5 to 15 days or more to be restored if you are lucky enough to and have an immutable backup, on top of all your employees grasping for their files, folders, and line of business applications… Impossible to not shake your bones in a situation like this !

 

Businesses need a good IT policy, frameworks, procedures, and people training besides the right IT Solution in place alone.

 

How to bring your legacy to the modern Hybrid Cloud and start easily managing your environment?

 

In recent years, Microsoft has been developing its Cloud platform, precisely to simplify the management, administration and security. It has simplifying its own costs on a subscription based payment system, instead of the old Enterprise Agreements with SAM assessments that take time and energy from IT teams. It is important to mention that since 2017, Microsoft has consistently invested around 1 billion US dollars in security every year and today it is the Gartner leader in 5 different security segments:

• Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions,
• Access Management,
• Enterprise Information Archiving,
• Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tools,
• Endpoint Protection Platforms;

 

Given this, Microsoft today is able not only to deliver strong security products, but indeed a comprehensive set of integrated security solutions that provide great visibility to Admins and or SecOps Admins.

 

New trends are coming to the market and it will be the topic of our next blog:

Modern Desktop Transformation

See you next time!