Best Practices for Securing and Staying Compliant with On-Premise Microsoft Hosting Platforms

Introduction: As the digital threat landscape evolves and cloud-first strategies dominate the enterprise world, many service providers who continue to host Microsoft technologies on-premises face growing challenges around security, compliance, and platform integrity. At MachSol, we’ve anticipated these shifts. Our control panel helps service providers efficiently manage hosted environments such as Microsoft Exchange, Hyper-V, SharePoint, and Skype for Business and many more.

This blog serves as a strategic guide for our customers to secure their infrastructure and stay compliant while continuing to offer these services to end consumers.

Key Security and Compliance Challenges

• Increasing vulnerability exposure of legacy and unpatched systems
• Misconfigured access controls and administrative rights
• Limited logging and audit visibility
• Manual or inconsistent patch management
• Weak segregation between tenants in a multi-tenant hosting setup
• Compliance with regional and international data protection laws (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA)
• Lack of cloud-like automation and zero-trust enforcement
• Dependency on traditional security models instead of modern layered security architectures

Best Practices to Secure Hosted Microsoft Technologies

1. Identity & Access Control

• • Enforce strong password policies and account lockout rules
  • Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Integrate with external IdPs (e.g., ADFS, Azure AD, KeyCloak etc.) for SSO and conditional access.
  • Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) through third-party integrations
  • Disable unused or stale user accounts automatically

2. Network and Perimeter Security

• • Segment traffic between tenants using VLANs or dedicated interfaces
  • Implement IDS/IPS systems alongside firewall and anti-DDoS tools
  • Use TLS encryption for all external and internal communications (Exchange, Skype, SharePoint)
  • Monitor lateral movement with internal traffic analysis
  • Deploy perimeter firewalls with logging and geo-blocking rules
  • Configure Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Server for layered protection

3. Patch Management and Vulnerability Scanning

• • Maintain a regular patching cycle for OS, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, and Hyper-V
  • Conduct monthly vulnerability scans and annual penetration tests
  • Use tools like WSUS, SCCM, or third-party solutions for automatic updates
  • Document and remediate CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) per system

4. Logging, Monitoring, and Auditing

• • Enable centralized logging with secure log forwarding to SIEM platforms
  • Enable Exchange and SharePoint auditing for user and admin actions
  • Track and alert on anomalous access attempts or configuration changes
  • Generate and store periodic compliance reports (weekly/monthly)

5. Data Protection & Backup

• • Encrypt data-at-rest using BitLocker or SAN/NAS-native encryption
  • Perform automated daily and weekly backups with item-level restore capabilities
  • Test backup restore processes quarterly
  • Apply retention and DLP (Data Loss Prevention) policies across all hosted platforms
  • Ensure integration with anti-virus, anti-spam gateways and frameworks like SPF/DKIM/DMARC/Email Signing & Encryption for email hygiene

6. Tenant Isolation and Policy Enforcement

• • Use MachPanel’s multi-tenant provisioning to isolate resources and controls
  • Enforce unique mail flow rules, data access restrictions, and admin roles per tenant
  • Monitor and block cross-tenant data access anomalies

7. Compliance and Documentation

• • Maintain updated operational, security, and change control documentation
  • Perform internal compliance checks every quarter
  • Map security measures against regulatory requirements (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST)
  • Stay updated with Microsoft’s evolving security baselines for on-prem deployments

8. Platform Modernization Strategy

• • Explore hybrid integration with Microsoft 365 for extended security and compliance
  • Migrate specific workloads (e.g., archiving, eDiscovery) to secure cloud environments
  • Use MachPanel APIs to integrate with modern cloud tools while keeping core workloads on-prem

Why This Matters — A Business Case

Failing to secure hosted workloads risks customer trust, legal action, and brand damage. But simply copying cloud practices without context leads to overhead and inefficiencies.

Your competitive edge lies in:

• Proving compliance readiness during customer audits
• Maintaining SLAs with security resilience
• Reducing support costs through automation and standardization
• Positioning yourself as a trusted provider in regulated regions

How MachSol Helps:

MachSol’s control panel was designed with multi-tenancy, automation, and compliance in mind. Our solution offers:

• Centralized management of Microsoft Exchange, Hyper-V, SharePoint, and Skype for Business and others.
• Policy-based provisioning with detailed audit trails
• UI and API access controls for granular tenant isolation
• Automation support to reduce human error and enhance operational efficiency
• Built-in reporting and alerting tools for proactive platform monitoring