By Insight Editor / 3 May 2022
Active Directory (AD) is crucial for controlling risk and ensuring compliance, but without additional tools to manage and automate processes, the manual confirmation burden of identity security falls on managers, HR representatives and IT staff. Here’s how One Identity, a solution from Quest, works with Microsoft Azure® to alleviate those challenges and provide holistic, unified identity security.
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Audio transcript:
Erin
Hello, and thank you for joining us for another "Insight Tech Talk". My name is Erin Hazen, and I am a Client Solutions Executive here at Insight. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Stacey Blanchard Senior Director Sales Engineering, North America for One Identity. Stacy has spent the last 10 years bringing security solutions to One Identity's customers. And for six of those years has been focused on the US Federal Government space, no small task. Stacey, I know that you're passionate about solving identity governance and privilege risk issues for customers. We're so grateful for your time today to talk about these really important topics. Thanks for being here.
Stacey
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here with you, Erin. And first actually, I'd like to congratulate Insight for being the 2021 Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year for Azure Migration. And honestly, this is really important for the conversation that we're going to be having today, so congrats.
Erin
Thank you, that's yes, super exciting.
Stacey
Yeah, so as most of you might know, a key tenet of Azure is Azure Active Directory or some people say Azure AD, we're talking about the same thing. So when companies are considering an Azure migration, one of the things that they might be considering is moving from On-Prem AD to either Pure Azure AD or more likely to a hybrid Azure active directory which means that they're going to have some in the Cloud and some On-Prem still. So they would keep it some things On-Prem for applications and workstation login and use Azure AD for Cloud access. So as that Azure migration partner of the year a lot of your customers are thinking about how are they going to do this? So when we think about active directory from an identity security perspective without additional tools to help manage and automate those processes the manual confirmation burden falls on managers, HR reps, IT staff, people who don't really know the right answers to those things, so the good news is that One Identity's Active Roles which we're going to talk a little bit about today can help alleviate those challenges. Active Roles is a product from One Identity that's actually been around for 20 plus years and started as an On-Prem active directory solution that helped people with provisioning to their active directory, de-provisioning and then managing the accounts in a really modern way. And since then as Azure's become the hot thing for everyone, we've morphed that product into being available for both the On-Prem and as I mentioned the Azure active directory in the Cloud. So probably really important for your customers and I can tell you a little bit more as we talk through this about why Microsoft Azure and One Identity are better together.
Erin
I love this and you're totally right. As a Client Solutions Executive who deals with clients on a daily basis we've seen a huge uptake in the need to address identity security especially of course, over the last couple of years. So, let's really dig into this together Stacey, what are some of the biggest challenges around managing Azure AD from an identity perspective?
Stacey
Yeah, there's a lot, that's a great question. So I would say first and foremost, Active Directory is crucial to controlling risk and ensuring compliance so it's important to everyone in the organization and then the user accounts that are being hosted in your Active Directory, whether it's On-Prem or in Azure are really important for security and difficult to maintain honestly, so that's a huge challenge. And as we see in all of the breaches that we've seen in the news, so many of them are done using privileged accounts or even just regular user accounts. So making sure that you have your house in order with those accounts in Azure active directory are super important. The other thing have you seen this Erin? So when people are talking about migrating from On-Prem to Azure, their administrators are now going to be dealing with multiple consoles so with Active Roles, they're going to be able to see one console, everything that they have. Have you seen that as a driver for some of your customers?
Erin
Definitely, and I love that this is an opportunity to sort of like take away some of the overwhelm, it's overwhelming and scary, right? When you're dealing with your organization's security to have that peace of mind knowing there's a space where you can see sort of this overarching view is going to be huge.
Stacey
Yeah, that's true and the last couple of things I'll mention as huge challenges as you move into this Azure world, our license management. So making sure that the right people have the right licenses to everything that you have in Azure and Office 365 and also flexibility of structure. So what they're used to seeing in On-Prem active directory is not available in Azure. So with Active Roles they're going to be able to get that real flexibility of structure as well.
Erin
So key, right? No two organizations are structured the same, no two maybe challenges are the same so the opportunity for that flexibility is going to be so important in just that peace of mind, like I said, around the ability to manage this sort of very important but overwhelming piece of the business. So let's put ourselves in the shoes of our customers here for a minute and talk about as an Azure customer, what are some key questions that you would want to ask yourself to determine if One Identity's Active Roles would be a good fit?
Stacey
Yeah, good question I mean, as much as we can educate our customers on what they should be asking the better. So I guess the first thing I could think of would be do I have the need to provide privileged account management for my Azure active directory? And most of the time the answer to that is going to be, yes. One of the key buzzword that you could look out for would be zero trust. I mean, I know this is all over IT and security vendors right now, but if a customer is looking at what do I need to do around zero trust? Looking at a combination of Active Roles and our PAM product would be a great result for addressing their zero trust problems. Another question that they should be considering is are we operating in a hybrid environment where we're going to have both On-Prem and Azure Active Directory where a single console would ease that administration for my team? So again, back to that ease of administration and kind of single pane of glass for everything. The final question I can think of right now would be, is there a requirement now or in the future to automate provisioning of user access rights in active directory, Azure active directory, or even AD joined systems like Linux, Unix, anything like that?
Erin
And I imagine the answer to that is often yes, right? As people are future thinking around that ease, the automation, I can imagine these are all things that people are thinking about it. And just kind of hopping back to your comment about the hybrid environment, my experience with my clients is a bunch of them have to still exist in that hybrid world just to accommodate their business critical applications, some of them have to live On-Prem some of them don't and so to know that yeah, there is that future planning and then also addressing the need for right now that's amazing actually, to learn about this Active Roles program.
Stacey
Yeah, absolutely.
Erin
I love it so, in addition to the Active Roles product is there any other solutions that One Identity would suggest to Microsoft customers that would be a benefit?
Stacey
Yeah, actually we do, that's a great question. So One Identity is the only company that has a full unified approach to identity security. What that means to us is we have solutions in four pillars that all fit into that identity security space. We've already talked about Active Roles, that's one of them. The second would be PAM or Privileged Access Management. The third is IGA, Identity Governance and Administration and the fourth is IAM, Identity and Access Management which is really around SSO and multi factor technologies.
Erin
I love that and when we're looking for that sort of industry verification, validation, support to know that One Identity has such a stronghold within that Gartner sort of ecosystem that's really, really great to take back to our clients. Maybe one more question that I could ask you is just around the partnership between Insight and One Identity and maybe the sort of why Insight for One Identity collaboration is really a super one.
Stacey
Sure, well, I mean, I would say that Insight is one of our most strategic partners and we're really excited to be working with you guys and for all of kind of the reasons that we talked about around bringing everything to a customer that's looking to solve a lot of problems in identity security, I think it could really help your Insight sellers to assist their customers with that holistic unified identity security story. So I think in my opinion that's the best thing that we could kind of work hand in hand on those problems.
Erin
I really appreciate that. Just knowing that we have this trusted partnership, that we have partners like One Identity who are innovative and at the top of the industry leading the charge against this really huge topic, yeah, really value this partnership and I'm super grateful for our time to be able to talk together today Stacy, it's been a sincere pleasure learning from you and having your expertise and thought leadership around this topic and sharing the capabilities that One Identity can offer.
Stacey
Thank you, it was great to talk to you as well.
Erin
Really great and thank you everyone for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about One Identity solutions you can certainly visit insight.com and to connect with a One Identity by request representative. While you're on insight.com, we definitely would love for you to log in and and sign up for our quarterly newsletter, it's called, "The Tech Journal" where you'll find even more inspiration and insights to the future of technology. Again, my name is Erin Hazen, I'm so grateful for your time and attention today. It's been a pleasure and I cannot wait to "Tech Talk" with you again in the future. Have a great day.
Client Solutions Executive, Insight
Erin is passionate about supporting clients and helping organizations thrive by leveraging digital transformation. Throughout her career, she’s made it a priority to develop meaningful connections — whether that’s through events, leadership opportunities, marketing initiatives, or connecting over coffee. Erin is an intuitive and attentive leader and collaborator who establishes and fosters trust relationships with clients, teammates, and stakeholders alike.
Sr. Director of Sales Engineering, North America, One Identity
Stacey has spent the last 10 years bringing security solutions to One Identity’s customers, with six of those years focused on the U.S. federal government space. Stacey’s strong background in Microsoft technologies built the groundwork for her career at One Identity. Prior to joining the company, she solved cybersecurity problems for federal, state and local government agencies during her tenure at companies like L-3 Communications and IBM Global Services, and as both a consultant and employee of the District of Columbia Office of the CTO. Stacey is passionate about solving identity governance and privilege risk issues for customers.
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