ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Our client is a national tyre distributor with office, warehouse and retail presence located nationally and in NZ and South Africa. A rapid growth strategy has resulted in the acquisition of many subsidiaries. Today, their reliance on IT and technology to support a complex business model is significant.

As part of an organisational-wide consolidation exercise, and in conjunction with enhancing their overall cybersecurity position, our client needed to centralise their endpoint protection solution.

Microsoft was chosen as the preferred endpoint protection vendor. Microsoft Defender for Office365 and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint was implemented across forty-plus domains, 500 endpoints and 100 servers.

PROJECT SUMMARY:

PROJECT NAME: Migration to Microsoft Defender for Office 365 & Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
DATE: November 2023 – January 2024

TECHNOLOGIES
SOFTWARE – Microsoft Defender for Office 365 & Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

DESIGN
Employing Microsoft’s best practices in conjunction with security frameworks outlined by NIST/CISA, Defender has been configured to strike a suitable balance between security measures and end-user experience. This achievement is marked by the implementation of features like self-service release for quarantined mail, safety tags, and the management of Defender EDR through Arctic Wolf.

EXECUTION
• The Microsoft Defender for Office365 migration was carefully scheduled to move the domains in batches to reduce the scope of impact with each change as well as reduce the amount of potential issues to a manageable size.
• The rollout of Defender for Endpoint was introduced slowly to a set of pilot machines before targeting a wider array of devices. This approach allowed us to confirm the migration process as well as manage potential issues.

RESULT:

The seamless transition to a modern security stack has contributed to enhancing their cybersecurity position, while unlocking operational efficiency in rationalising applications and support.