Enterprise Software Company Migrating to the Microsoft Cloud + Duo

The Challenge

A large company helping clients build out enterprise software applications and processes needed to secure its own rapidly changing IT infrastructure. After a number of acquisitions, the company found that different teams were using different software deployed in different locations, often serving the same purpose.

For example, the company inherited Office 365 through one of its acquisitions, but had not yet deployed cloud-based email to most of its original employee base that was still using on-premises Exchange. As a result, a small fraction of the company was now using an entirely different email solution than everyone else.

This was also the case with its Active Directory deployment. The company had two primary Active Directory databases. One was hosted locally on its own premises and served its internal employee base. The other, which was used for partners and contractors, was hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Hosting the latter in the public cloud made operational sense because of how scalable and elastic the Azure infrastructure is.

However, this made security operations difficult for a resource-strapped IT team, as it had to secure a hybrid public/private cloud environment while keeping the end user experience simple and intuitive for everyone. “We wanted to find a single solution that could easily secure access to any application regardless of where it was hosted. This turned out to be surprisingly more difficult than we originally thought,” said the Manager of Information Services.

The Solution

The applications team at the company was already using Duo to protect some of their own engineering resources. Upon hearing that the entire company was evaluating a two-factor authentication solution, they were quick to recommend Duo for its ease of use and reliability.

“We needed a security solution that every employee could use. As a forward looking IT organization, we wanted whichever solution we picked to be entirely smartphone-based. Duo Push is great for our end-users because it’s quick, it’s easy, and most importantly, our employees don’t feel like they’re being overburdened.”

The company is quickly expanding its Duo deployment across its entire application infrastructure, for both on-premises and cloud applications. In addition to protecting its Microsoft environment, the company also uses Duo to secure remote access to its VPN gateway and the internal network.

The manager closed with saying, “Seeing the support that Duo has for various Microsoft applications has been great for us. It helps us sleep better at night knowing that as we go through some of these public cloud migrations (Exchange and Office 365, on-premises and Microsoft Entra ID), Duo can stay right there with us without any complications.”