RSMUS.comAt RSM, we have been educating our clients on the merits of effectively managing corporate data in the world of mobility and cloud adoption. The issue has been that the way your IT department has been allowing your employees to use their devices and apps likely has not kept up with the dramatically advancing modern secure workplace capabilities that are available to the mid-market at reasonable prices.
The adoption of mobility and cloud services is driven by a variety of benefits, such as the flexibility to give users the ability to be more productive. We now have access to innovative tools and policies that protect corporate data while giving end users the best possible experience across their devices.
A large part of our conversations with clients starts with conditional access, a component of Azure Active Directory Premium and bundled in Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 or Enterprise Mobility + Security E3/E5. Conditional access is the first step in safeguarding authentication to your cloud services where sensitive corporate data resides.
Conditional access leverages parameters that are used to evaluate the user, location and device management state to determine whether they are permitted to connect to the service.
Examples of a control may be to require multi-factor authentication when the device is coming from an unknown location, or perhaps leverage Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to determine if there is a risk associated with the user, such as impossible travel to an atypical location. If triggered, all access is blocked and the incident is reported to IT.
In the example above, because this was highly sensitive data, IT has applied a location-based conditional access policy that blocks all users when they are working from an untrusted location.
To speak with an RSM modern secure workplace consultant, schedule a rapid assessment exploratory call today. Our IT Infrastructure Rapid Assessment service is a quick-hit diagnostic tool aimed at discovering risks and opportunities in an organizations’ infrastructure. Or call 800-274-3978 and ask to speak with an RSM Infrastructure professional.
Geoff Hopkins
Geoff is the national lead of RSM’s cloud platforms solutions team and manages multiple markets within RSM’s Northeast technology management consulting practice. His collective experience over 22 years includes strategic planning and management of technology and operations with a distinguished career supporting high-end infrastructure engineering, systems implementation and resource management. With the continued adoption of the cloud in the middle-market, he has focused on developing solution frameworks, blueprints and scorecards to support standardization efforts and reliability to the middle-market. Primarily focusing on the Microsoft stack of services, running on and via industry leading components for networking, compute, storage and security as organizations adopt a modern workplace. Geoff’s team maintains strong skills around cloud services such as Azure and Office 365 as well as providing strategic advisory vCIO, managed services and turn-key project based staff for digital transformation, modern workplace and providing pragmatic work programs to deploy new or migration ready infrastructure such as performing post acquisition carve outs. His team is adept in discovering opportunities that enhance IT offerings including service management, business resumption planning, productivity, automation/process improvement, consolidation and driving total cost of ownership benefits with end-to-end infrastructure and platform strengths to weave between strategy and final execution of roadmaps. Professional affiliations and credentials * Azure Cloud Architecture * ITIL v3 Foundations / COBIT Framework / Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) * Six Sigma Lean & Yellow Belt * VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP 5) / Business Continuity Accreditation * Dell Enterprise Architecture Storage Education * Post Graduate Commerce, Charles Sturt University, Australia