Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM November 2019 | Page 22

TECH
DAVID ALCORN
Franchise Owner
NerdsToGo League City
www.nerdstogo.com/location/league-city-tx/
IMPLEMENTING A DOMAIN
The First Step in Securing Your
Small Business
I
walked into a local small business to setup a printer
for the ability to scan to email, when I noticed
the administrator’s desktop. There were so many
active ex-employees stored on the machine – with
administrator accounts of course – that I was left
speechless. They’ve had professional services in the
past, but were never provided a total solution or, at
least, educated. This is something EVERYONE needs to
understand, because it can bring your company to its
knees.
Picture this:
There are 4 doors in your home – the front door, back
door, garage door, and the shed with all different keys.
There are six members in the home, and they all have a
key to each door. When one person leaves on bad terms,
the only way to keep them out is to remember to take all
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4 keys, change the locks, or any other method to remove
their ability to gain access with the keys they possess. The
solution would require a little work up front, but what if all
the doors had the same lock? When the person leaves,
there is only one key to obtain and their access is denied.
The common lock is your domain, and the keys are your
user accounts.
When a domain is created, a manager(server) needs
to be placed in the environment. The server is required
due to its ability to run multiple services at once and
“serve” its domain members or “clients.”
All management items must be purged from the
local computers, that were once operating as individual
managers, and allowed to have all policies provided by
the domain controller. When an employee is hired their
account is created, following some common naming
convention. That account
would obtain the same
permissions on any computer
in that domain. When that
employee becomes a former
employee, that user account
can be disabled from the
domain controller and will no
longer have system access.
This is the first step
in setting up a security
framework as well
as preparing for the
management of files, folders,
security policies, updates, etc.
This system implementation
is an implementation that
only needs to happen once
with upgrades thereafter.
The incidents experienced
companies neglect to
implement a framework truly
outweigh the capital required
to deploy. This is acceptable
in a small home, not in a small
business.