Global Real Estate Firm Trusts Velosio and Microsoft Azure to Secure Sensitive Documents in the Cloud

When your retired legacy server reaches end-of-life status, it’s critical to secure the sensitive files and data on those servers. But it’s neither practical nor cost-effective to purchase and maintain new on-premises servers. As you consider your alternatives, it’s vital to find a secure environment to prevent data leaks that could harm your brand and possibly lead to regulatory violations.

That’s the challenge a global corporate real estate firm with headquarters in the U.S. recently faced. As they decommissioned old servers, they discovered sensitive client information in a legacy instance of their ERP platform—Dynamics SL. To remain in compliance with real estate regulations, the firm needed to maintain a copy of the information while preventing unauthorized access.

Minimum Monthly Fee and No Server Maintenance

To solve the challenge, the real estate firm turned to Velosio. We configured a new instance of Dynamics SL, running in a Microsoft Azure data center, and then moved the client’s old data from the decommissioned servers to the cloud. Rather than purchasing servers and allocating internal IT resources to manage the devices, the client pays a minimal monthly hosting fee, and Velosio takes care of all the system administration.

The client’s IT team appreciates that they don’t have to monitor and patch the servers. Plus, the operations team values knowing that the data is secure—fully protected by Microsoft technologies and the cybersecurity experts who staff the Azure data center. And because the data is in the cloud, the client’s authorized users can access the information at any time from any device.

Data Integrity Ensured

Even though the client’s network is shared, Microsoft has implemented several mechanisms to ensure the network remains segregated and secure:

• The client’s network is isolated and only available to authorized administrators.
• Just-in-time access and privileged access controls ensure unauthorized individuals do not gain access.
• Data is encrypted while in transit with the option to also encrypt data at rest.
• Network virtualization ensures Microsoft clients can’t access another client’s environment.
• Hyper-V and Intel SGX chip-enabled servers segregate execution and data from the OS.
• Microcontroller chips protect servers and networking gear against malicious updates.
• Server firmware ensures pre-boot, boot-time, and runtime integrity.

Microsoft also performs regular firmware code reviews, and the Azure data center team monitors the security of the hardware and firmware to detect and mitigate any threats before they impact the client’s business. Another key security capability is protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that can bring down client servers. The DDoS protections continuously monitor traffic and use scrubbers and client traffic profiling to detect and then deflect these attacks.

Thousands of Cybersecurity Experts Providing Peace-of-Mind

In addition to all the security technologies deployed within Azure data centers, Microsoft employs more than 3,500 cybersecurity experts to work on our client’s behalf 24x7x365. This includes managing the network cabling, the equipment to support and secure the network, and the integration of systems for monitoring the network.

As this success story illustrates, Microsoft’s investments across infrastructure, hardware, and experts are unparalleled. They provide a secure infrastructure for our client’s Azure data center, composed of segregated networks, well-maintained hardware and firmware, and industry-leading operational security processes.

In addition to the peace-of-mind our client has—knowing their legacy SL data is secure—they were also surprised to learn the process to migrate its legacy data to Azure was quick and required minimal effort from the internal IT team. Azure now provides our client with a secure foundation across physical, infrastructure, and operational security.

The Azure environment is ideal for any company with old databases and other legacy software about to be retired—whether it’s a Microsoft Dynamics solution or technology from another software publisher.

To find out more about how Microsoft Azure can provide a secure environment for your on-premises legacy systems, contact Velosio today.