For those who are working in an office with a large network, I am pretty sure that your company is using the Active Directory service of Microsoft to handle computers inside your office. Active Directory is recommended for offices that handles several computers. In this article, I will be explaining the role of an Active Directory in a company.

First of all, Active Directory was developed by Microsoft and it is a service that controls both the users and the computers in a specific network. It can control the rights and the limitations of a user. The active directory is capable of disabling programs that are not needed or the folders that you could access. The said program can help the IT department of the company to implement policies and securities that are required.

The Active Directory is also the one being used to create user ID's that could access the domain. It is also where the IT department resets the password if ever a certain user forgot it. It is basically a secured way to access the network. If ever someone wants to access a computer but he/she does not have a valid account, the domain would not allow... you to log in.

It is also possible for you to create groups on the Active Directory so that you could easily know the department of a certain user. It is also used to easily implement certain restrictions for a certain group. For example, there is a shared network file that belongs to the IT department but an employee from the HR department tried accessing it and he was able to. If that happens, there is a big possibility that there is no restriction for the said folder. A restriction must be implemented so that only the IT department employees can access the shared folder. The said policy is a good practice on how to secure your network. It can prevent authorized access to files and folders.

Using an Active Directory is not that hard to understand but it needs someone who has good knowledge about it for it to work smoothly. If a new IT employee would have direct access to it without proper training, it could result to problems.

As I have said, this program is usually used by offices that have big numbers of employees. It would not be practical to have this one if ever that your company is operating with a few employees only.