Hybrid cloud management is the process of managing an organization's on-premises and cloud infrastructure. The term "hybrid" can be used to define a combination of traditional on-premise applications paired with cloud-based applications.
Organizations are reluctant about moving to the cloud completely, as the move requires time, effort, and money. This is why organizations are using a combination of both on-premises and cloud applications.
Identity and access management (IAM) is a collection of processes and policies that help create and manage the digital identities of users, verify them within an organization, and control their access to essential resources within that organization.
Microsoft Active Directory is the identity provider for all Windows-centric on-premises systems and applications. IT admins use Active Directory for central administration of systems and users within their network. Similarly, organizations use Azure Active Directory as the identity provider for all Microsoft-centric cloud applications.
To get a deeper understanding of IAM, let's look at an example:
When a new employee joins an organization, it's essential to create corresponding accounts across all the required enterprise applications immediately or prior to onboarding, so the employee can begin working right away. They also need to be assigned access permissions to critical digital resources to ensure continued productivity. Every organization needs to have an IAM process in place to ensure that the correct users have appropriate access to resources at the right time.
AD contains all the essential information about every resource on your network, including who has newly joined your network, what files they can open, what groups they belong to, and more. The core objectives of AD include:
Confirm the existence of objects on a network and identify their locations.
Decide whether an object is allowed to connect to a network by validating the user's credentials.
Provide access to the required resources on the network.
When new employees are onboarded, they might need to sign in to their workstations and multiple custom applications to begin work. Authentication and authorization to the workstations, applications, files, and servers is governed by AD. For instance, Microsoft Outlook uses the capabilities of AD to allow users to log in to their Exchange mailboxes.
The use of AD for authentication is not limited to on-premises applications and can be extended to various cloud applications like G Suite.
Azure AD helps extend identity and access management capabilities to the cloud. However, you need the right kind of identity provider for your that can meet the specific needs of your hybrid environment.
Many organizations do not want to spend additional time and effort to maintain a server. In these cases, the capabilities of Azure AD, hosted on Microsoft's remote servers, can be leveraged on a subscription basis.
Azure AD and on-premises AD are similar in some functions and vastly different in others. Azure AD primarily acts as an authentication store and works great for management of users in cloud apps. However, there are various other authorization-related functions that can only be carried out using native AD.
For instance, Azure AD does not support group policies. It also has a flat directory structure, i.e., it does not have OUs and forests.
While AD is great at managing user identities and access to on-premises apps, Azure AD handles user access to cloud applications efficiently. Their only area of intersection, as shown in the following diagram, is user management.
Choosing Azure AD or on-premises AD depends on your organization's administrative needs.
Native AD can be configured to get access to cloud apps, but configuration can be cumbersome. Consider a scenario where you have a traditional on-premises environment with AD at its core but you wish to use Azure AD to handle cloud apps easily. You can use the capabilities of both of these identity providers.
If your network is centered around native AD but you have Microsoft 365 configured for your users, then the Microsoft 365 users are handled by Azure AD. However, in such a scenario, users would have to use two sets of credentials—one for network login and the other for Microsoft 365. In such a scenario, you can sync your on-premises AD and Azure AD, so that users have to use only a single set of credentials.
However, if you're an organization that's looking to use only cloud-based applications, then you can just use Azure AD.
Creating workstations using Azure AD is not possible. So how can you join PCs on a network that is solely controlled by Azure AD? Well, you can use Azure AD Join to configure workstations. However, to tackle the absence of group policies, you need to use a mobile device management (MDM) solution like Microsoft Intune.
In an Azure AD controlled environment, if you wish to have apps that are not Saas-based or need to run on your own servers, then you can make use of Azure virtual machines (VMs).
While native AD and Azure AD tools are essential for identity and access management across a hybrid environment, they are quite cumbersome to use.
Below, we'll discuss some of the well-known challenges of using these tools.
Performing AD tasks using native tools such as ADUC or PowerShell tends to be time-consuming. For instance, when it comes to user creation via the ADUC, technicians have to first create the user, locate the user in the OU tree, and then set or modify the properties of the user. Wouldn't it be better if all the details of the object could be filled out before creating it?
Admins can also automate AD routines such as creating multiple users and configuring their attributes, at once. However, automating tasks requires the use of PowerShell scripts, which is difficult to understand and debug. Minute errors in script can cost you a substantial amount of time for a task as simple as user provisioning.
User onboarding in any organization first requires HR to fill in details of the user. The same data is then forwarded to the admin, who configures the user's properties either using the ADUC or PowerShell. Instead of having to repeat the process of data entry, it's better to have an option to directly pick the data from the HRMS and create users automatically without using complex scripts.
Administrators tend to overwork themselves with mundane tasks, as they're not comfortable with allowing technicians to access domain controllers directly since even a minute mistake can render the entire network unstable. However, if admins take care of even the most basic tasks on their own, more important and high priority tasks like setting up security policies, and more, are put on the back burner, which is not good for the organization.
A better alternative is to employ a third-party application that allows technicians to perform basic AD tasks without accessing the domain controller directly.
Tasks like setting up policies, bulk provisioning of objects, automation, and more require AD expertise. Even the UI of most of native tools is complicated to use and requires someone with adequate AD knowledge to perform even the simplest tasks like password resets.
A good alternative would be a third party application that has an easy-to-use GUI, which can even be used by HR associates to perform simple tasks like user creation. Availability of pre-built templates can make this task easier and can reduce the burden on administrators.
Every organization has standard AD routines that have to be executed at specific intervals. Manually keeping track of the schedule to run these routines can prove to be difficult. Automation of these routines is the perfect solution to this issue. However, running automations using scripts is difficult and error-prone task. A good alternative would be to have a UI using which routines can be easily automated.
After enabling the audit policies, admins have to dig deep into the event viewer to identify different events. Detecting anomalous behavior using the event viewer is difficult, and admins have to forward these event logs to another SIEM tool to get the required conclusions and alerts.
A better alternative is to invest in a tool that audits and correlates events, and generates alerts.
Deriving conclusions with the help of reports using PowerShell is a cumbersome task with many parameters to take into consideration.
A better method is to have UI-based options to generate reports and manage the objects or accounts in the report from within the report itself.
AD is the backbone of every enterprise IT. But every enterprise also needs to employ Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365, Skype for Business Server, G Suite, and other cloud applications to help their employees perform better. Configuring all on-premises and cloud application of every user calls for the admin to switch back and forth between the console of all of these applications multiple times and can be confusing and time-consuming.
A good alternative would be to configure accounts across all of these applications from a single console, thus eliminating the process of toggling between multiple windows.
The native AD tools do not support incremental backups. Furthermore, the native tools do not support granular restoration of objects either. Restoration using the native tools also requires restarting of DCs.
A good alternative is to use a solution that provides the capability to perform incremental backups, full backups, and granular or complete restoration without requiring a restart of DCs.
Most of the help desk calls in every organization consist of password reset and account lockout tickets. However, if employees had the power to perform password resets on their own, the help desk calls would be reduced by half or more.
The above problems dictate the need for a one-stop solution that simplifies AD management, reduces help desk calls, does not require AD expertise, has great auditing capabilities, and eliminates the need for PowerShell scripting.
Performing AD tasks using native tools such as ADUC or PowerShell tends to be time-consuming. For instance, when it comes to user creation via the ADUC, technicians have to first create the user, locate the user in the OU tree, and then set or modify the properties of the user. Wouldn't it be better if all the details of the object could be filled out before creating it?
Admins can also automate AD routines such as creating multiple users and configuring their attributes, at once. However, automating tasks requires the use of PowerShell scripts, which is difficult to understand and debug. Minute errors in script can cost you a substantial amount of time for a task as simple as user provisioning.
User onboarding in any organization first requires HR to fill in details of the user. The same data is then forwarded to the admin, who configures the user's properties either using the ADUC or PowerShell. Instead of having to repeat the process of data entry, it's better to have an option to directly pick the data from the HRMS and create users automatically without using complex scripts.
Administrators tend to overwork themselves with mundane tasks, as they're not comfortable with allowing technicians to access domain controllers directly since even a minute mistake can render the entire network unstable. However, if admins take care of even the most basic tasks on their own, more important and high priority tasks like setting up security policies, and more, are put on the back burner, which is not good for the organization.
A better alternative is to employ a third-party application that allows technicians to perform basic AD tasks without accessing the domain controller directly.
Tasks like setting up policies, bulk provisioning of objects, automation, and more require AD expertise. Even the UI of most of native tools is complicated to use and requires someone with adequate AD knowledge to perform even the simplest tasks like password resets.
A good alternative would be a third party application that has an easy-to-use GUI, which can even be used by HR associates to perform simple tasks like user creation. Availability of pre-built templates can make this task easier and can reduce the burden on administrators.
Every organization has standard AD routines that have to be executed at specific intervals. Manually keeping track of the schedule to run these routines can prove to be difficult. Automation of these routines is the perfect solution to this issue. However, running automations using scripts is difficult and error-prone task. A good alternative would be to have a UI using which routines can be easily automated.
After enabling the audit policies, admins have to dig deep into the event viewer to identify different events. Detecting anomalous behavior using the event viewer is difficult, and admins have to forward these event logs to another SIEM tool to get the required conclusions and alerts.
A better alternative is to invest in a tool that audits and correlates events, and generates alerts.
Deriving conclusions with the help of reports using PowerShell is a cumbersome task with many parameters to take into consideration.
A better method is to have UI-based options to generate reports and manage the objects or accounts in the report from within the report itself.
AD is the backbone of every enterprise IT. But every enterprise also needs to employ Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365, Skype for Business Server, G Suite, and other cloud applications to help their employees perform better. Configuring all on-premises and cloud application of every user calls for the admin to switch back and forth between the console of all of these applications multiple times and can be confusing and time-consuming.
A good alternative would be to configure accounts across all of these applications from a single console, thus eliminating the process of toggling between multiple windows.
The native AD tools do not support incremental backups. Furthermore, the native tools do not support granular restoration of objects either. Restoration using the native tools also requires restarting of DCs.
A good alternative is to use a solution that provides the capability to perform incremental backups, full backups, and granular or complete restoration without requiring a restart of DCs.
Most of the help desk calls in every organization consist of password reset and account lockout tickets. However, if employees had the power to perform password resets on their own, the help desk calls would be reduced by half or more.
The above problems dictate the need for a one-stop solution that simplifies AD management, reduces help desk calls, does not require AD expertise, has great auditing capabilities, and eliminates the need for PowerShell scripting.
AD360 is a web-based solution carefully designed to serve the following needs of identity and privilege management in a hybrid environment:
Using AD360, you can automate the creation, modification and deletion of multiple objects in your AD, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft 365 environment in one go.
Using AD360, you can eliminate most help desk calls by allowing users to securely reset their passwords on their own.
Using AD360, you can enable users to log on to enterprise applications in a click.
AD360 allows you to granularly assign privileges and access rights to different files and folders. You can also use prepackaged reports to view ACLs and permissions of different folders and files.
You can also use AD360 to take incremental backups of your AD and Exchange environment, perform attribute level restoration of objects without restarting your DCs, implement AD Recycle bin features and more.
With AD360, you can document the various requests and their corresponding review status to keep a tab on the different tasks that are being performed.
With AD360, you can document proof of IT compliance for standards like SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and more with the help of pre-packaged reports.
AD360 allows you to audit AD, Microsoft 365, and more, and use machine learning to detect anomalous behavior and prevent cyberattacks.
You can also delegate tasks related to a certain OU to specific technicians. This way they don't have to access the DC directly to perform the delegated tasks.
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