Securing directory services
Each cloud provider has its own implementation of a managed Active Directory service. This service allows you to centrally manage your user and computer identities, join Windows machines to the Active Directory domain, set password policies (such as the password length, password complexity, and more), and control access to traditional resources (such as Windows file shares, SQL servers, IIS servers, and more).
It is important to note that as a customer, you always have the option to deploy Active Directory domain controllers based on virtual machines and maintain them yourself, as organizations are doing on-premises (this is also known as a self-hosted solution). However, the goal of this book is to show you how things are done using managed services, where, as a customer, you can focus on consuming the IAM service (that is, authenticate and create identities and then grant them permissions) without having to maintain servers (such as availability, patch...
