identity-data

How to lock down OU movement and deletions Organizational Units (OUs) are more than “folders” in Active Directory. They’re policy boundaries (GPO linking), delegation boundaries (who can manage what), and often the backbone of your administrative model. If someone can move an OU, they can silently change which policies apply to thousands of…

Shared drives and file shares look simple on the surface: “give Finance access to \\FS1\Finance.” In reality, they become one of the fastest-growing sources of permission sprawl, audit pain, and accidental overexposure—especially in environments with multiple file servers, legacy shares, and hybrid identity. The most reliable way to keep access stable over…

Using OU structure to mirror organizational hierarchy Organizational Units (OUs) feel like the “obvious” place to represent how a company is shaped: divisions, departments, regions, and teams. In Active Directory, that instinct is half right and half dangerous. The part that’s right: a good OU design makes administration predictable, delegation…

If you’re still assigning Microsoft 365 licenses user-by-user, you’re doing identity operations the hard way. Group-based licensing flips the model: instead of asking “What does Alice need?”, you decide “What does a Sales Analyst get?” and make group membership the single source of truth for licensing. This approach scales, reduces mistakes (missing…

AD group expiration and recertification best practices Active Directory groups are one of the most powerful—and most quietly dangerous—access control primitives in Windows environments. They’re easy to create, easy to nest, and easy to forget. The result is predictable: groups that outlive their projects, privileged memberships that never…

Mapping users to OUs via dynamic properties Active Directory (AD) works best when Organizational Units (OUs) reflect how you operate: how you delegate, how you apply policy, and how you lifecycle identities. The problem is that people and org charts don’t stay still. Departments rename, locations split, teams merge, contractors come and go…