Directory service platforms are a vital part of your company’s IT infrastructure: they allow you to manage your staff’s user identities and connect them to apps, devices, networks and files – controlling both their level of access and the way that they use them.
Traditionally, the solution was to use a platform like Microsoft Active Directory (AD) – which was designed to connect Windows users to other on-site, Windows-based resources. So the rise of non-Windows IT and the growing popularity of Mac and Linux-based systems created something of a problem: to make AD work with all these unsupported resources, you need to use a range of add-on solutions – which generate extra product and management costs.
That’s why more and more businesses are making the switch to next-generation cloud directory services: instead of sticking with an old-fashioned and restrictive on-site platform like AD, they can use a cloud alternative that’s both more flexible and more powerful, at a fraction of the cost. The latest cloud directory services – which take a centralised approach to identity management – offer three key benefits:
Efficiency
- Your staff can log into almost any IT resources – including apps, systems, files and networks – using a single, secure set of credentials. Also known as True Single Sign OnTM (TSSO), this does away with staff needing to remember a range of different passwords to access different systems.
- They can change or rest their password themselves, without needing to generate a help desk ticket.
Security
- Multi-Factor Authentication strengthens your staff’s logins (for more on this, check out our upcoming blog post, ‘MFA Everywhere’).
- RADIUS cloud servers provide your staff with unique WiFi and VPN logins, instead of a shared (and therefore less secure) WPA key.
- You can instantly strengthen the security settings on every work device in your organisation, using cross-platform Group Policy Objects (GPOs). (You can find more on this in our previous post, ‘5 Mac security features you should be using’).
Control
- Cloud directory services are platform-agnostic, making it easy to manage workstations, laptops and servers across your entire business, whether they’re Mac, Linux or Windows.
- A protocol-independent cloud platform allows you to use a range of powerful network management features, including SAML, LDAP and RADIUS – without any need for on-site infrastructure. Offering SaaS (Software as a Service) gives unrivalled flexibility, convenience and security.
- A cloud-based service is ideally suited to both remote working and remote device management.
We hope you found this article helpful – you may like this Blog about MFA (Multi Factor Authentication) useful.
And to find out more about our other services, just get in touch or visit our services overview page.
