IT Admins: Make the Leap to the Cloud With Domainless Architecture
With the pandemic forcing everyone to work remotely temporarily the IT landscape has shifted to the way it manages remote access work resources. IT organizations had to pivot quickly to a different model for its work organizations to continue functioning efficiently and securely. Covid-19 has led many organizations to rethink domain management and security that is required to run its day to day IT infrastructure.
The new approach to domain management and security has new attributes and is called “domainless enterprise”. What this implies is that domainless enterprise IT resources do not require the user to connect initially to a company's domain controller. Only a year ago, before the pandemic, all users were required to authenticate themselves against a company’s domain controller. The domain controller verified the user and the users security level and permissions. This was always done on the premises of the company’s office. Those users that worked remotely in the past had to use VPN to first access the company’s network and then were verified against the domain controller(s).
The new model of domainless enterprise, as with zero trust networks, each user and their access is treated as its own atomic unit. The function of creating an atomic unit of work is to verify the user’s identity, role, security and permission levels. This allows for access requests that are coming in from the user to the corporate network to ensure that the user is trusted and authorized to access IT resources. Because access is treated as an atomic unit of work, it no longer requires remote users to login into VPN and corporate networks at all. This in turn eliminates the antiquated VPN requirements while simultaneously providing remote and on location corporate users with easier access to their IT resources.
The IT landscape is constantly evolving to new technologies and management of IT resources. With the advent of web-applications, mobile-apps, multiple Operating Systems and infrastructure as a service in general, has led IT to change its view of domains. With more users working remotely, and companies allowing more users to work remotely, IT organizations have decided that they have outgrown the concept of corporate in-house domains. During the pandemic IT administrators have experienced this change first hand, with remote users having to VPN into empty networks just to authenticate themselves. Users that are remote and have different office locations are using web applications and mobile applications that authenticate the user directly without requiring domains. This authentication allows almost frictionless access to IT resources from office and remote locations securely. In addition new authentication practices and using passwordless access can be far more secure than traditional domain based password methods.
Not everyone can immediately transition to the new approach of domainless enterprise. But it is being recognized already as the new way of doing business and many IT organizations are planning to adopt it going forward. Security was always the most important aspect of domain controllers, which will not be easily replaced. The identity of the user and their correct secure authentication will decide if a new approach is going to be widely adopted. Modern identity providers are deeply involved in securing the new methodology and technology in order to provide IT resources to its users. There is no doubt that the IT world has changed and will continue adopting permanently to the next generation of digital network and security.