The customer, one of the world’s leading and most recognised university ranking groups, had grown through acquisition, resulting in multiple legal entities in the UK and a business in the US. They had two Microsoft 365 tenants, one in the UK and the other in the US. The US tenant was managed by a third-party IT provider in the US with limited involvement from the UK team. When a new requirement came into effect for the UK team to take control over the US tenant, the team turned to Forge Technologies to perform an M365 Audit and understand the current state of the US tenant, its issues, and its maturity level.
Enlightened by the results, the UK IT team requested the same audit for the UK tenant, which revealed common configuration problems across tenants. This opened several work streams for remediation work on the back of the audits
The Activity
The Microsoft 365 Audit process involved scraping configuration details from the tenant, which were then used to populate a report. Using a using a traffic light system, the report highlighted areas of concern regarding configuration, security, policies, and user adoption, including five red zone issues related to the maturity level of security inside the tenant.
It was evident that the tenant had grown over time. Typical of a business that had grown organically, they started with a very basic configuration and a certain license set and then increased licenses based on their needs at the time, but they never assessed the features those licenses enabled.
Upon reviewing licensing and usage, we discovered that certain features could be enabled to enhance the management abilities of desktops within Intune and Endpoint Management. The customer had enabled certain licenses and features but didn’t have a full roadmap for using the additional capabilities that came with those licenses. Working closely with the customer, we established a common security standard for the company and reconfigured both the UK and US environments to achieve consistency. In addition, we customised the branding of the tenant, with the aim of improving the end-user experience and to help increase awareness to end users where they should be using business credentials. The UK team now manages everything, which has made troubleshooting much easier. Having consistent policies in place has led to an improved security posture across both environments, giving the IT team increased control and understanding of the tenant.
The Result
The Microsoft 365 Audit has led to an improvement in the adoption of services, increased security, greater visibility and data governance, improved user experience and the overall management capability of the desktops. This would not have been achievable without the implementation of appropriate policies. The presence of a strong infrastructure today puts the company in a better position for future growth. We have helped the customer to migrate and consolidate several newly acquired businesses in the UK while adding new users and data to the Microsoft 365 environment in a structured and secure manner, with greater control over the tenant, policies, and security.
