Case Study: Howard County protects critical services and streamlines user provisioning with Quest

County government protects critical services

Howard County, Maryland — a county government serving 300,000 residents with a small IT team supporting 3,500 user accounts across a hybrid environment — struggled with native tools to manage account provisioning, Group Policy, change auditing and disaster recovery. Granting departmental IT broad domain admin rights to work around those limitations created security risks and consumed excessive time, jeopardizing service availability for critical departments like public safety.

By deploying Quest’s Microsoft platform management suite (including Active Roles, GPOADmin, Change Auditor and Recovery Manager), the county implemented role-based delegation, one- or two-click provisioning/deprovisioning, GPO change control and real-time audit reporting plus granular AD recovery. The result: improved security (no need to grant domain admin rights), faster troubleshooting and compliance reporting, reliable backup/disaster recovery, and significant time savings for the IT team.

Howard County

Terrance Diggs

Service Desk Manager