ETS' Office 365 solutions help alleviate stress
on overloaded VPN system

Before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, only a handful of ITD employees were set up to work remotely and access ITD applications away from the office. In March, Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) guided over 1,600 employees to work from home within a matter of days through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), but the new VPN load exposed ITD to numerous cyber concerns. 
  
“What we needed was a way for any computer to be able to remotely access applications securely without VPN,” said IT Solutions Architect Nathan Lewis. “The solution was to use the existing O365 portal to present these applications as new applications within Microsoft’s cloud.”  
  
In 2013, ITD migrated email capabilities to Microsoft’s cloud platform – Office365 (O365). This allowed users to access email, contacts and calendars from home, eliminating the need to be at an ITD facility.   
 
The ETS team realized O365’s existing built-in functionality could support ITD's applications as new apps in the O365 portal. Since authentication to the portal was already required, this solution used existing authentication to provide the security rights needed.  
 
"Implementing the innovation on an already-solid foundation has allowed users to work from home in a faster and safer manner," said Lewis. "By building out our subscriptions in Microsoft Azure and utilizing the Application Proxy service, this allowed us to quickly deploy our application to an O365 platform we were all familiar with, helping us ease into the new world of remote working for many ITD employees.” 

Published 08-21-20