Cloud Archives - Red Level

Migrating to Azure with Confidence

You’ve already envisioned the benefits: you know migrating to a cloud-based hosting platform can boost the performance of your organization’s computing infrastructure. You can see how it’ll improve efficiency, save time, and reduce costs. And you’re prepared to join the hundreds of thousands of other businesses, large and small, that have already chosen Microsoft Azure for its service quality, security, reliability, and global reach. But there’s no getting around it: migrating to the cloud entails significant organizational change. To make the best possible use of the Azure platform, you need to understand its unique attributes and keep them front of mind throughout the migration process, and beyond. Fortunately, Microsoft offers an extensive set of tools and services that can help ease and simplify migration. And as a Microsoft partner with extensive experience helping our clients shift existing applications to the Azure platform, Red Level can ensure that you’ll take advantage ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:15+00:00

Top 5 Infrastructure Trends for 2019

We’ve bid 2018 farewell and welcomed 2019 with open arms. So what's next? What’s going to happen in 2019 from an infrastructure perspective? The answer for 2019 is similar to that of recent years. Cloud and security are still the top priorities. Let’s take a quick look at what may impact your infrastructure focus. 1. Exchange Migration Migrations from Exchange on-premises to Exchange online and upgrades from older versions of Exchange to the latest version are both projects going strong in 2019. We continue to support our clients who are going through these Exchange migration and upgrade processes and predict that Exchange migrations, upgrades, and support will continue to be a trend with our clients. 2. Multi-Factor Authentication To add additional security, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provides one or more additional forms of authentication for users when they log into company resources. Traditionally, users would log into their computers or other ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:29+00:00

Red Letter IT Newsletter – November 2018

MEET THE TEAM: Helpdesk Manager, Hayley Sargent Hayley Sargent leads Red Level's Helpdesk team as they wrangle technical issues and support the IT needs Detroit area business. TECH NEWS: What is Cloud Computing? If you aren't taking advantage of cloud computing, or don't know how best to implement it, we've written this guide to help you. THANKSGIVING: Happy Thanksgiving from Red Level A few members of our team of IT pros at Red Level sit down to share their favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner plus some of the reasons they are feeling thankful this year. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: What Digital Transformation Means for Your Business Mike Balatzis, Red Level's Microsoft Manager, talks Digital Transformation and what it really means for business owners and executives. FOOTBALL PICKS: Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Football Predictions Red Level shares a few of their predictions about the upcoming game between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears on ...

Kristy Mossoian2023-02-16T16:01:32+00:00

Azure Information Protection

How do you ensure your organization's confidential documents are accessible by approved eyes only? Fear not. Azure Active Information Protection can be your trusted friend to ensure that the sensitive data is well protected when appropriate groups or policies are set up and implemented. Specifically, Azure Information Protection, which is data loss prevention (DLP) for documents can be utilized to secure your confidential data. This blog provides a high-level overview of the DLP solution for Microsoft Azure. There are some different ways to start leveraging the platform and protecting your sensitive documents. Labels Place appropriate labels on your documents - you can have these labels applied by the users as they're editing documents Using client application and plugins into the office applications to apply labels when editing documents Customize your labels to control access to the documents by department or personnel. Create visual marking on the documents, such as header, ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:33+00:00

Azure Active Directory Identity Management

Microsoft Office 365 is widely used in many organizations. If you are an administrator for your Office 365, you are likely to be familiar with the Admin Center to look at user accounts and monitor activities. But do you know all the account activities were pulled in from Azure Active Directory in the cloud and are only displayed in the admin center? If you've got Dynamics, Exchange, SharePoint, or any of the Microsoft software that is in the Cloud, it's going to be using Azure Active Directory as its Identity Manager in the back end. There are a couple different approaches to manage identity in Azure Active Directory. Identity Sharing- As an admin, you may be familiar with creating Active Directory trust to different organizations, so you can authenticate across organizations or different servers across organizations. However, you don't have that ability with Azure Active Directory. In Azure AD, it's called ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:34+00:00

Multi-Factor Authentication Conditional Access Configuration

Multi-Factor Authentication Conditional Access and Policies Configuration Multi-factor authentication (MFA) creates an extra step to verify user identity who wants to gain access to your server or database. MFA provides greater security with that layered authentication approach. When hosting MFA on-premises, you can lock down the server or cloud applications that are tied in with Microsoft ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) in the environment that you have deployed. In this blog, we will be discussing a couple of different ways to manage the cloud version MFA, including setting up conditional access for your MFA. MFA Management Console Go to your Groups and select MFA authentication You should see a list of your users with an indication if they have already enabled MFA Enable MFA for your administrators or selected users By enabling MFA, your users or admins will be prompted to set up their second form of authentication device when ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:34+00:00

What’s on every CIO’s Christmas Wish List (and in their Netflix Queue)?

Grab the popcorn and dim the lights. It's the perfect time to cozy up with your favorite Christmas movie. We gathered the team together to share a few of their favorite holiday films and a few ideas that should top every CIO's Christmas wish list.

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:41+00:00

Checklist For Evaluating Managed Services Providers

Think of the last business partner you selected for your company. Was it your accountant, attorney or financial advisor? Evaluating your IT consulting firm and even more specifically, your managed service provider is one of more important business decisions you'll make. The right managed service partner helps tobuild reliability and performance into your company’s IT environment – and takes problems and support costs out. A study by SpiceWorks done in November 2017, shows the budget breakdown by company size which states smaller companies are more likely to shell out more for managed hosting, while larger companies are more likely to invest in managed cloud infrastructure in 2018. Here is the Managed Services budget portion breakdown for 2018: Managed hosting (12%), managed storage/backup (9%), managed hardware support and maintenance (9%), and managed security (9%). What does it all mean? Managed Services allow you to augment your existing IT staff and infrastructure by partnering with ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:41+00:00

Eight is Great!

Red Level named as one of "Detroit's 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For" for eighth consecutive year Not to be arrogant, but we kinda thought this might be coming. For the eighth year in a row, Red Level's been named to the National Association of Business Resources' Detroit's 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For list. That makes us very happy, just as it has for each of the last seven years - even if we aren't completely surprised. In all honesty, any well-run business should have at least some idea as to how well it's performing according to a variety of metrics beyond dollars and cents. To our way of thinking, one of these has to be employee satisfaction. In our view, it simply makes good business sense to make sure that the people you hire enjoy what they do, enjoy where they work, have opportunities ...

David King2023-02-16T16:01:42+00:00

YES, WE REALLY ARE THAT COOL!

It’s official: Red Level is decidedly cool. You don’t have to take our word for it. Just ask Crain’s, or the folks at Best Companies Group – they’ll tell you. In fact, they’re telling the world. And we’re not shy, so we’ll announce it too: Red Level has been officially been proclaimed one of the 2017 Cool Places To Work in Michigan by Crain’s Detroit Business. We couldn’t be more pleased. “Cool,” of course, means different things to different people. Depending on your perspective, it could mean having a “Bring your Lhasa-apso to work day,” an indoor lacrosse field, or hot and cold running Red Bull. We’re not cool in that way. But we seem to be cool enough to pass muster with Best Companies Group’s judging team, who got a good hard look at who we are, what we do, and how we do it. It meant peering under ...

David King2023-02-16T16:01:43+00:00

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