Challenge:

The client, a construction company based in West London, was facing several issues with their digital infrastructure. Their website was underperforming, leading to slow load times. They were also subscribed to multiple services with GoDaddy, including domains, web hosting, and email accounts. The client felt overwhelmed by the number of services they were paying for, some of which were not being fully utilised. They had lost track of which services were essential and which were not. Moreover, the client was concerned about the security of their company data and client information, as it was being accessed on personal devices without adequate safeguards to prevent data leaks. GoDaddy’s limited Microsoft 365 admin controls further compounded their problems, preventing them from deploying App Protection Policies or Conditional Access Policies.

Objective:

The goal was to streamline their digital infrastructure, enhance the performance of their website, and improve the security of their corporate data and client information.

Strategy:

  1. With the client’s permission, we began migrating the domain and web hosting services from GoDaddy to Hostinger. This move offered better performance and additional features such as object caching and unlimited SSL certificates, leading to a significant improvement in the website’s performance.
  2. We also optimised the media files on the website. For instance, we converted most of the file formats to .webp, a modern image format that offers superior compression for web images. This change resulted in quicker load times for higher quality files.
  3. Instruct GoDaddy to release the company’s domain from their Azure tenancy and begin restoring existing user mailboxes and data to a newly established Azure tenancy, which is now entirely under the control of the company.
  4. Upon analysing the client’s email usage, we found that not all mailboxes needed to be licensed accounts. We converted these to shared mailboxes, which do not require paid license assignments.
  5. Designed App Protection Policies to require biometric security for accessing company applications, e.g. Outlook, OneDrive, Teams. Restricted users to only being able to share company data between company apps (e.g. from Outlook to Teams, or OneDrive to Outlook), and not from company apps to personal apps (e.g. WhatsApp). This ensured company data was not leaked intentionally or unintentionally. Additionally, we introduced conditional access policies to enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and location-based access.

Result:

The migration to the new hosting provider greatly improved the performance of the website. The optimisation of media files resulted in faster loading times for high-resolution images. The analysis of email accounts led to cost savings by converting some licensed accounts to shared mailboxes. The migration of user accounts accounts away from Godaddy and to a new Azure tenancy gave the company full control over their Azure tenancy. The implementation of App Protection Policies and Conditional Access Policies enhanced the security of company data and client information, and prevented potential data leaks. These changes have significantly improved the overall digital infrastructure of the construction company based in West London. This case study demonstrates WeAreLIT’s commitment to providing tailored, effective solutions for our clients.