Remote Accessibility to Data and Security with Azure Virtual Desktop

G. P. Kapadia & Co. provides services in auditing and assurance, tax and regulatory, transaction advisory, and consulting, keeping in mind the regulatory and commercial environment within which the Firm’s clientele operates.

Company

  • Size: 51-200 employees
  • Location: India – Mumbai

Industry

Practice Areas

Challenge

GPK faced many issues concerning their Enterprise server availability, IAM, secure server access, scalability, and HA. Users faced significant downtime if the server was down or they experienced any other server-related issues. This created a significant challenge as all of their apps and data assets were on a single server and were open over the internet, creating vulnerability to various cyber-attacks.

From the storage perspective, it was too restricted as data was not easily scalable or accessible. In addition, their data assets were stored in a way that created a single point of failure. To create stability and reliability while being secure, they wanted to implement distributed data model with redundancies so data could be distributed across their Enterprise server environment.

Solution

Cloud 9 provided a solution to increase scalability, flexibility, and security. The migration of workloads from RDS to Azure WVD unlocked a secure, reliable, flexible, scalable structure, optimizing resources and cost-saving for GPK. Moving to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform with 1TB of data storage and lots of applications and users made it easy for the organization to cope with the new reality generated by COVID-19.

Over a single weekend, Cloud 9 deployed a comprehensive desktop and application virtualization service running in the cloud, Windows Virtual Desktop. Thanks to the solution, more than 60 employees could continue performing their daily tasks remotely from their own devices. The new Azure platform has created the highest security profile along with an improved user experience. Cloud 9 also hardened a security jump server to block any direct RDP access attempts. Backups were also configured to create increased reliability. Redundancy and cost efficiencies.

Results

With the help of Cloud 9, GPK users can now access their data and applications securely while improving auditing capabilities. GPK already used many Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365, Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), FXLogicx, and GPO’s. So they had profound experiences with a well-known and trusted cloud provider such as Microsoft.

Out-of-the-box integrations offered through the Azure marketplace were another benefit. Azure gave Clod 9 the flexibility to tailor solutions to their CX needs. GPK has historically put security at the top of their priorities. Knowing that Microsoft has a long list of security certifications and ISO standards coupled with the ability to adapt to new regulations and compliance requirements made Azure the platform of choice.