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Brian Desmond

Brian is a principal at Ravenswood Technology Group where he leads a team of professionals focused on delivering best-in-breed consulting services for the Microsoft security and identity management ecosystem. Brian has been recognized annually as a Microsoft MVP since 2003 and is the author of the fourth and fifth editions of Active Directory from O'Reilly.

Components of a PKI, Part 3: Certificate Revocation

One important function of Certificate Authorities that’s mentioned briefly in Part 2 of our “Components of a PKI” blog series is the ability to perform certificate revocation, or the CA’s [...]

Components of a PKI, Part 2: Certificate Authorities and CA Hierarchies

In Part 1 of our “Components of a PKI” blog series, we defined several PKI terms that are useful for understanding Certificate Authorities (CAs—also known as Certification Authorities) and CA [...]

Extending the Active Directory Schema

[ARTICLE] Extending the Active Directory Schema Historically, both Active Directory (AD) administrators and IT managers have been fearful of extending the AD schema. Much of this fear stems from Microsoft [...]

4 Best Practices for Hybrid Identity Attributes in Active Directory

User attributes are important metadata that should be treated with care. Some organizations do not take user attributes seriously enough, which creates problems when the company tries to automate system [...]

How to Effectively Manage Microsoft Intune Application Assignments with PowerShell and the Microsoft Graph API

In large-scale Microsoft Intune deployments, you’ll typically find both production and development tenants. For effective application testing, you’ll need to assign your applications to test groups of devices or users. [...]

6 Ways to Increase Hybrid Active Directory Security in an Ever-Changing Landscape

[INFOGRAPHIC] 6 Ways to Increase Hybrid Active Directory Security in an Ever-Changing Landscape As a result of aging IT systems and increased sophistication of hackers, threats to cybersecurity continue to [...]

Active Directory Replication Topology

[ARTICLE] Active Directory Replication Topology In a previous article titled Active Directory Replication In Depth, Brian Desmond discussed the specifics of Active Directory (AD) replication technology with regard to how [...]

Seven Entra ID Premium Features Worth Paying For

[WEBINAR] Seven Entra ID Premium Features Worth Paying For Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) Premium is a critical component of the security and identity platform in Microsoft 365. Being [...]

Benefits of Air-Gapped Active Directory Backups

Several high-risk events have recently highlighted the importance of a fully functional and secure Active Directory environment to a company’s business operations. [...]

Hybrid Identity Security Panel

[PODCAST] Hybrid Identity Security Panel What does efficient hybrid identity protection look like? Are you under the impression that your organization is too large to go passwordless? In this recording [...]