Finance Industry- active directory project case study
About the company
This not for profit federal credit union was founded in 1952 and operates in both Nevada and California. It is the 66th largest credit union in California and operates with 11 branches and approximately 200 employees. This organization offers a full range of financial services to consumers, including savings and checking accounts, credit and debit cards, car loans, insurance, merchant services, phone banking, mortgage loans, micro consumer loans, real estate loans, business share accounts, and complex investment planning. They also offer eBanking and online financial learning and counseling to their members. They have approximately 58,000 total members and manage approximately $734 million.
CHALLENGES
Active Directory (AD) is a Microsoft product that consists of services that run on Windows’ servers to manage permissions and access to networked resources. This organization’s current active directory was out of date needed to be updated in order to enhance their IT team’s AD functionality, network administration, and cyber security. To do so, this organization needed to upgrade to the latest operating system for their active directory domain controllers (ADDC) and raise their domain and forest functional levels to support new features. They also needed to verify the compatibility of their applications and services with the updated OS that the new ADDCs will be running and their compatibility with the target functional levels. Their leadership team evaluated Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) or Okta; after having decided on ADFS, they needed the engineering resources to implement and upgrade the system. This organization then looked to the expertise of PM2NET’s engineers.
ASsessment and solution
PM2NET’s solutions architects were responsible for performing an active directory health check, deploying ADFS, and preventing any issues associated with the new ADFS. The project’s scope included the following:
(1) Solutions architects to review the current active directory domain controller design
(2) Perform an active directory health check while documenting any issues
(3) Remediate any active directory issues as needed, if the issues will interfere with the upcoming active directory upgrade
(4) Develop a successful migration strategy with necessary applications running
(5) Assist the organization in the discovery of third-party applications with active directory integration or dependencies
(6) Upgrade 3 new domain controllers with Windows 2019 OS, 2 domain controllers at the organization’s headquarters and 1 domain controller in Sahara
(7) Perform a second active directory health check
(8) Support the organization in migrating applications, as necessary
(9) Trouble shoot new active directory issues caused by new directory controller introduction
(10) Raise both domain and forest functional levels to the highest levels possible
(11) Remove active domain services from their legacy domain controllers
advantages
With their current active directly being outdated, the organization’s IT staff may have soon faced issues with network administration, security, and functionality. Employing PM2NET and their solutions architects allowed for the successful OS upgrade for their active directory domain controllers and raised their domain and forest functional levels.
The IT staff from their organization benefited from a successful upgrade and migration, with all applications working with their new domain controllers. Their domain and forest functional levels were raised to the highest levels allowed, enabling new features to be supported. With their upgraded OS and active directory domain controllers, the organization’s IT team benefited from improvements in administration and network security. Finally, PM2NET’s troubleshooting ensured that the company had a working system that supported their legacy applications.