As your organization has grown, so has your IT infrastructure. You now have so many systems requiring some level of authentication, and so many protected data sets that need to be protected, that your organization has come to the realization that it’s time: You need to implement IAM. At first, this can be an exciting…
I’ve written and spoken many times about the topic of Shadow IT. It’s a tech buzz phrase with a somewhat negative connotation, indicating that users are taking IT matters into their own hands and bypassing IT to solve their own challenges. For the record, when a user does this and their actions put the organization…
Unless you’ve been living in an IT-less cave for the last 16 years, you’re probably well aware of the Managed By field in an Active Directory group, as well as the option to allow that specified manager to update group membership. When Microsoft created those fields, the intention was surely to help organizations distribute the…
Everyone’s worried about endpoints. And you should. As evidenced by the rise in organizations experiencing attacks via malware-laden websites, phishing and spear phishing, and OS/application vulnerabilities, the endpoint is a clear target for external attackers. Compromising an endpoint is frequently the first step needed to gain a foothold within your organization’s network, giving these attackers…
When we talk about consolidating Active Directory groups, we refer to the process of cleaning up the clutter of groups accumulated over the years, so that only the relevant groups exist in the directory. Consolidating Active Directory groups is one of the most daunting tasks that IT administrators must undertake. Poor cleanup procedures can expose…
Who’s in charge here, anyway? Even if you have only a modicum of proper group management in place, your groups should at very least have some documentation of (a) how a given group is being used in the Notes field and (b) who is responsible for the group in the Managed By field, for the…