Within the world of information technology, there is no shortage of solutions that each address specific needs within an organization. One of the keys to your business’ success is the reliability of your cybersecurity solutions and the safeguards you have in place to keep your precious data safe from bad actors. One such solution is Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at Azure Active Directory and the domain services associated with it.
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Let’s start with Azure Active Directory (or Azure AD). This is an enterprise identity service which provides single sign-on and multi-factor authentication to help protect users from cyberattacks. While no solution can promise a 100% success rate, Azure AD currently boasts a 99.9% rate of cyberattack prevention.
There are four primary points of interest as it pertains to Azure AD:
- Single sign-on simplifies access to your applications,
- Conditional Access and multi-factor authentication help protect and govern access,
- A single identity platform allows you to engage with both internal and external users more securely, and
- Developer tools make it easy to integrate identity into your apps and services.
So, now that we’ve looked at what Azure AD is, let’s look at a more specific aspect of it. Azure Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS). ADDS is a server role within the Azure AD which allows administrators to manage and store information as it concerns the network’s resources and other applicable data. ADDS also helps admins manage the network’s elements (namely computers and end users) and reorder them into a customizable hierarchy.
When you create an Azure ADDS, two Windows Server domain controllers (DCs) are deployed into your selected Azure region. The deployment of which is known as a replica set. Additionally, you don’t need to manage, configure, or update these DCs. The Azure platform itself will handle the DCs as part of the managed domain, including backups and encryption.
Microsoft invests more than $1 billion/year on cybersecurity R&D, employing thousands of experts.
There are many benefits of using ADDS for your basic network and computer management. These benefits include:
- You customize how your data is organized to meet your organization’s needs,
- If needed, you can manage AD DS from any computer on the network,
- Provides built-in replication and redundancy: if one Domain Controller (DC) fails, another DC picks up the slack, and
- All access to network resources goes through AD DS, which keeps network access rights management centralized.
But why should you trust ADDS? It all comes back to Microsoft and the work they continuously pour into Azure. Microsoft invests more than $1 billion per year on cybersecurity research and development, including employing more than 3,500 data security and privacy experts. Finally, when implementing Azure ADDS, you are partnering with a cloud provider which has been certified by globally and nationally recognized organizations including ISO, HIPAA, FERPA, and the IRS.
Interested in putting Microsoft Azure AD and/or Azure AD Domain Services? Innovative Integration is a Microsoft Certified Partner, so we are licensed by the experts themselves to get your Azure AD and AD Domain Services online as you continue to improve your cybersecurity and optimize your business’ success.
