Leading manufacturer protects business operations with fast disaster recovery.

Benefits

• Slashes AD recovery time from several days to just a few hours
• Enables quick granular recovery of objects and properties, maximizing user productivity
• Facilitates compliance with strict modern regulations, including the GDPR
• Improves cyber resilience in case of cyberattack, human error or other adversity

The Story

Keeping IT processes operational is vital for every modern organization

Today, the IT ecosystem is the foundation for business operations. Indeed, in a sector like manufacturing, keeping IT systems and data available is just as important as maintaining machinery and securing facilities. That’s why Marcegaglia Group, the top player in the world in the steel processing sector, was eager to improve its ability to restore operations quickly in case of an IT disaster.

Founded in 1959 by Steno Marcegaglia, the company now comprises 7,500 employees and 36 plants across four continents. Today, the children of Steno Marcegaglia, Antonio and Emma, control the Group, which processes 6.5 million tons of steel annually and has a turnover of €9 billion. Its 15,000+ customers represent a wide range of sectors, including building and construction, automotive, food and agriculture, furniture, chemical and petrochemical, and hydromechanics and hydraulics.

If Active Directory goes down, costs immediately begin to soar

The company’s highly efficient logistics and distribution network relies on a hybrid identity infrastructure: a single Active Directory (AD) domain with 25 domain controllers synched with Entra ID. The leadership team was acutely aware that identity-based attacks are on the rise and that the manufacturing sector is a top target.

They also knew that AD downtime could have serious consequences for the business. “Active Directory is critical for user authentication and access management, so AD downtime could halt many vital business operations,” explains Renzo Rossi, CISO at Marcegaglia Group. “The most obvious cost is lost revenue, which grows with every minute of downtime. But AD downtime can also lead to damage to brand reputation, loss of customer trust, and potential future revenue losses due to customer churn. Those costs are harder to quantify but can be significant over the long term.”

And the risk of extended downtime was high for Marcegaglia Group. The recovery process was manual, so restoring even a single domain controller was extremely time consuming and fraught with potential for human error. Moreover, only one or two IT team members were available to perform the recovery, increasing the need for an automated solution to help.

Regulatory compliance is another key concern

In addition to these pressing concerns about business continuity, Marcegaglia Group also faced challenges related to compliance with increasingly strict regulations. “We are committed to ensuring that the company adheres to the GDPR and all other relevant laws and regulations,” Rossi states. “An essential component of compliance is ensuring that we can restore Active Directory and Entra ID quickly to minimize downtime.”

True cyber resilience means being able to recover from a wide variety of adverse events. “While cyberattacks like ransomware are a top cause of AD downtime, it’s important to remember that there are other potential causes as well,” notes Rossi. “For example, technical failures such as hardware malfunction or software bugs, human errors by employees, and problems with third-party services or suppliers can lead to AD downtime.”

For business-critical projects, it’s wise to choose best-in-class tools and trusted partners

To implement a comprehensive AD disaster recovery strategy, Marcegaglia Group turned to their trusted adviser for more than a decade, Impresoft 4ward. The team at Impresoft 4ward recommended the Quest disaster recovery solution, which pairs Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition with On Demand Recovery. The IT team at Marcegaglia Group agreed with that recommendation, based on both their success using Quest migration solutions for a prior consolidation project and testing of the Quest disaster recovery solution.

“Our partnership with Quest has been a key enabler of delivering robust and reliable disaster recovery solutions to our clients,” says Francesco Molfese, Cloud Infrastructure Director at Impresoft 4ward and Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management. “The top benefits of working with Quest include the high level of support provided, the flexibility of their solutions in adapting to various client needs, and the comprehensive documentation and training resources that help ensure smooth operations and quick issue resolution.”

In reviewing the Quest solution, the team at Marcegaglia Group was particularly impressed with security-related capabilities such as supply chain integrity and secure, air-gapped backup storage. “The security features provided by Quest were a differentiating factor in the purchase decision,” says Rossi. “These features align with the high level of security required for our operation, ensuring the privacy, confidentiality, integrity and availability of our systems. Plus, when we tested the Quest solution, we found it very easy to use.”

Easy deployment and a rich feature set ensure quick time to value

The team had the Quest solution up and running quickly. “Quest’s tools are not only technically advanced but also easy to integrate, which significantly reduces deployment time,” Molfese recalls. “The solution was integrated into the client’s environment without disruption. The configuration process involved tailoring the recovery settings to the client’s specific Active Directory architecture and recovery time objectives (RTOs).”

The solution readily addresses all the core areas of concern for Marcegaglia Group, including business continuity, security and compliance, and risk management across its hybrid environment. “Together, Recovery Manager for AD and On Demand Recovery ensure rapid restoration of services in case of failures,” explains Molfese. “The solution enables automated, seamless recovery of objects, permissions and configurations across both on-premises and cloud-based environments.”

Moreover, the value of the Quest recovery solution is not limited to AD disaster scenarios — it also supports granular restores. “With our previous approach to backup and recovery, performing object-level recovery was too slow to meet our business needs,” Rossi explains. “With the Quest solution in place, we can quickly and easily revert unwanted changes to a user or a Group Policy object to correct configuration drift and maintain strong productivity.”

The Quest solution slashes AD recovery time from days to hours

Fortunately, Marcegaglia Group has not had to use the Quest solution to recover from a real disaster. However, testing reveals that it will slash the time required to restore operations if an incident were to occur. “Prior to implementing Recovery Manager, the AD recovery process would have taken several days due to the manual nature of the procedure, the need to coordinate between different teams and the complexity of the environment,” reports Molfese. “With the Quest solution automating the process, test recoveries complete within hours.”

Knowing that business operations can be restored quickly in case of a cyberattack, hardware failure or other adverse event provides Marcegaglia Group with peace of mind. “In addition, the automated recovery testing enabled by the Quest solution enables the company to perform more frequent and reliable testing of recovery scenarios, which helps ensure that they are always prepared for potential outages,” adds Molfese. “And it helps them meet regulatory and audit requirements with minimal additional effort, further enhancing the overall value of the project.”

“The Quest disaster recovery solution is a comprehensive and robust tool that provides significant value in terms of security, efficiency, and compliance,” concludes Rossi. “It reduces the risk of data loss and enables a more resilient IT infrastructure.”