Why Active Directory Security is Important to Office 365 Security

Organizations are moving workloads to the cloud at a rapid pace to take advantage of key benefits that cloud infrastructures provide such as faster time to deployment, the ability to scale, reduced maintenance and lower cost. For Microsoft, Office 365 is the fastest growing product in Microsoft history. 

But as sensitive data is moved into cloud infrastructures, attention now turns to cloud security – potential for data loss, data privacy, and data breaches. It’s not only cloud security that should be of concern, but on premise security, especially when talking about Office 365. Why?

Because what most customers may not be considering is how crucial on premise Active Directory security is when moving to Office 365. Office 365 requires an instance of Azure Active Directory, which is the directory service for Office 365 applications. Azure AD Connect allows synchronization between on premise AD and Azure AD, creating a hybrid AD environment. However, on premise AD remains the primary authentication and authorization source of access to cloud-based applications.

Microsoft has invested in Azure & Azure AD security controls, but on premise AD is still managed and secured by you, the organization, which means you are only as secure as the on premise AD security measures that you have in place.

Security threats are on the rise and hackers like Hank, a fictional character created for an upcoming webcast series, appear in many shapes and sizes and love to exploit the security limitations of AD, Azure AD and Office 365. With the average cost of a data breach reaching $4 million according to the 2016 Ponemon Institute study, it’s worth joining Quest for their upcoming webcast series, “How to Overcome Common Hybrid AD and Cloud Security Challenges,” and learn how to lock down your environment so hackers never get their eyes on your data.

Series starts May 3 and Quest will cover the following topics:

• Wednesday, May 3, 2017 — Identifying Hybrid AD Security Risks with Continuous Assessment
• Wednesday, May 10, 2017 — Sounding the Alarm with Real-Time AD Detection and Alerting
• Wednesday, May 17, 2017 — Who’s Watching the Watchers? Fixing and Preventing Inappropriate Privileged Access
•  Wednesday, May 24, 2017 — Investigating and Recovering from a Potential Hybrid AD Security Breach