Active Directory

2018: Changing the “Directory” Definition

Here at Imanami, we’ve spent the last number of years talking about the need to keep Active Directory secure. While still a valid and pertinent message today, a lot of changes in the industry give us pause to consider Active Directory’s role in the larger picture, and to reflect on how the very same group…

Real Cost of Managing Active Directory Groups

How to Calculate Cost of Managing Active Directory Groups

Groups are the lifeblood of companies and organizations of every size with in their on-premise and hybrid environments. They are the foundation for security and accessibility to resources and email functionality. The challenge is keeping them updated and current after they are created. In many cases, IT is tasked (via tickets) to add and subtract…

AD Squatter

Are Users “Squatting” in Your Active Directory?

While they’ve been around for decades, in recent years we’ve all been introduced to squatters — people who move into an empty house that isn’t theirs and then take full advantage of the benefits of having a place to stay. They obtain utilities, setup mail delivery, maybe even meet the neighbors — all the while…

Role-Based Authentication and Authorization through Attribute Evaluation

Ensure Right People with Right Access to Right Information at Right Time Defining system access for employees can be a challenging task for organizations of all sizes. But unless intimate knowledge of each employee’s role is known, granting access is often cumbersome and demands manual input from the IT department. What is needed is an…

Managing Groups in the Microsoft 365 (and Office 365) Cloud

Projecting your on-premise Active Directory groups into your M365 hosted Exchange You still need Active Directory even though you have outsourced Exchange to Microsoft via M365.  So, how do you manage it?  You want your user attributes to be accurate, group memberships up to date, unused groups expired, and security groups to be, well, secure. …

Active Directory – Coaching to Win

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.   – Vince Lombardi   Organization through automation and delegation is key to success The sport of American football has its games played on a field called a gridiron. Success…

Active Directory Tutorial

We Are All Surrounded By Dummies. Be Active Directory Smart. There are many experts in our field. I could not start naming them without leaving someone off what would be a very lengthy list of people I look up to. What I enjoy about knowing a little bit about these intelligent people is that they…

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Active Directory Group Name Examples & Best Practices

Imagine being named XYZ in a crowd of other XYZs – a purposeless name that creates confusion and does not communicate a purpose, adding to the cognitive pile of everyone’s day-to-day tasks. Similarly, Active Directory and Azure AD groups created by users need to have naming practices based on logical grounds centered around your organization’s…

When One Plus One is Greater than Two: Active Directory Automation

Max Wertheimer, the founder of the Gestalt Theory, once stated in a borrowed and commonly referenced Aristotle philosophy that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. This means that when one thing is grouped with multiple properties, it becomes stronger and can provide more value than it could alone. This concept directly…