How 75,000+ Orgs Secure the Cloud: Inside Maester & Other Free Tools

Petri Dish

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In this episode of Petri Dish, I talk to Merill Fernando, Principal Product Manager for Entra at Microsoft, and we discover how his free community tools, like Maester, are helping over 75,000 organizations automate security checks, prevent misconfigurations, and visualize complex policies.

Learn insider tips on Zero Trust Security, open source collaboration, and the future of AI-driven security for Microsoft 365. Whether you manage an enterprise or a small tenant, this interview is packed with actionable insights and real-world stories to help you secure your organization.

Russell Smith

Russell Smith, the Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase, has over two decades of hands-on experience in IT, in both small business settings and government IT infrastructure projects. Russell started writing for Windows IT Pro Magazine in the early 2000s. Since then, he has contributed insights to various IT publications, including Petri and CDW. His authoritative voice has resonated across industry blogs, where he dissects complex topics into an ‘easy read’. Russell has authored over a thousand articles, each a testament to his depth of knowledge. His expertise doesn’t stop there: he wrote a book on Privilege Management and co-authored another for Microsoft’s MOAC series. Moreover, Russell’s commitment to education shines through in the courses he crafted for Pluralsight. He is also presenter on his own YouTube channel, This Week in IT, and the current presenter of Petri Dish.