Duo Protects Microsoft Customers as They Move to the Cloud
With the annual Microsoft Ignite conference approaching, we thought we’d share with you some of the details around our continued collaboration with Microsoft and our support for their customers.
As Microsoft customers move to the public cloud, we’re seeing more Duo deployments to protect both on-premises and cloud-based Microsoft services. Cloud migration is a complicated and lengthy process, and most of them happen incrementally, like Office 365. Because of this, you need to think about security both during and after the migration. Thousands of Microsoft customers are using Duo’s Trusted Access platform to protect local and cloud-based applications and stay secure during and after their cloud migration projects.
Providing authentication and secure access for 500,000 end users logging into various Microsoft services has taught us a few things. We want to share some of these lessons and how you can easily integrate Duo to protect your Microsoft environment, too.
Secure Your Email Migration
Millions of companies are ditching their own Exchange servers and local Microsoft Office software in favor of Office 365 in the cloud. In fact, one out of every five corporate employees has an Office 365 account today; the rapid growth of Microsoft’s cloud email and productivity suite has been truly impressive. But most of these migrations didn’t happen overnight; many transitions took place over the course of months, and more are still in progress.
This means companies need to think about how to secure access to both Outlook Web App and Office 365 at the same time. You can read more about how we’re protecting thousands of customer email workloads in both Exchange and Office 365 environments, and how you can secure your own.
Protect Your Windows Environment
Windows is another critical environment that needs to stay secure whether it’s hosted locally or in the cloud. Many customers are leveraging cloud computing platforms like Microsoft Azure to run Windows Server and Remote Desktop infrastructures.
Duo currently protects Windows environments for more than 7,000 companies, from Windows Server logins (through RDP) to Windows Remote Desktop Services (through RD Gateway and RD Web). You can read more about how we’re protecting these Windows environments, and also how you can secure your own. Learn more about Duo’s integrations with Microsoft.
Windows Security Health
We also recently looked into the security hygiene of various Microsoft devices within our customer base, and some of the results warrant being highlighted. In total, we analyzed more than two million devices and nearly 8,000 integrations with Microsoft applications.
Of all the Windows devices that we analyzed, 65% were running Windows 7, missing critical security features and updates that are only available on Windows 10 devices. Additionally, only 38% of Internet Explorer browsers were running a current version of Adobe Flash Player.
This is especially problematic because Adobe Flash Player is one of the most exploited pieces of software on the market. Hackers can easily leverage unpatched vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Flash to install malware, initiate arbitrary code executions, and more. Stay tuned - we’ll be releasing a full Trusted Access report on the findings of our Microsoft data in November this year.
Leverage Active Directory
We’re also beginning to see many organizations take advantage of Microsoft Azure for their directory services. Most often, companies deploy Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to connect with various cloud applications, and to facilitate improved availability and disaster recovery planning. We also see a large number of customers deploying Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to connect multiple applications and directory instances together for a consistent login experience. By tying in Duo with Active Directory and ADFS, companies can easily enforce powerful role-based access control for any application.
Interactive Intelligence Customer Story
As a global company working with thousands of large enterprise to SMB customers, Interactive Intelligence knew it needed a cloud-based solution to handle user authentication and trusted access. “We needed a cloud-based, easy-to-use two-factor authentication solution for our 2,000-plus employees located across the world,” said Leon Ravenna, Interactive Intelligence’s Vice President of Security & Compliance.
Interactive Intelligence wanted to move beyond the token-based authentication method for users and began deploying Duo’s solution to groups of approximately 50-75 users a day. Those users receive an enrollment email to get set up through Duo’s self-enrollment and are starting to use the self-service portal for one of their customers. Both methods are remarkably easy. With more than 1,200 users enrolled so far, Ravenna reports there have been no complaints.
Rolling out Duo has been really smooth. Only a handful of our employees required additional help with the self-service portal. The Knowledge Base articles have been incredibly useful as well. — Leon Ravenna, Vice President of Security & Compliance
Read the full Interactive Intelligence Customer Story, and check out our other customer stories.
Learn More About Duo & Microsoft
To get more details about Duo and Microsoft’s collaboration, be sure to:
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Visit us at Microsoft Ignite, September 26-29 at the Georgia World Congress Center. We’ll be at booth #859, where you can get a product demo and enter a giveaway for a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. See how easily you can secure OWA, Office 365 and more in both hybrid and cloud environments.
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Join us in the Duo for Microsoft webinar, September 22 at 1 p.m. EDT, to learn three critical protections for securing your move to the Microsoft cloud.
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Read more about our Microsoft Services.
See you at Ignite,
The Duo Product Team