Avoid These Top 5 Mistakes When Setting Up Security in Dynamics 365 For Finance and Operations

Every deployment of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance or Supply Chain Management (aka Finance & Operations, or D365FO) has some kind of security strategy, for better or worse. For organizations still approaching their go-live or examining how to improve an existing system, there is a lot to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Many companies fall into common security pitfalls because they are frustrated with their project or simply do not have the resources to configure their security the right way. By keeping the most common mistakes top of mind and following the rules of smart security strategy, you will be equipped with a clear understanding of how your company should be approaching security using best practices that reduce both security risk and licensing cost.

1. Dynamics AX/365FO Security is Hard

If you underestimated the difficulty of security, you are not alone. Everyone experiences security pains—even me, as the Director of Dynamics AX and D365FO at Fastpath. I work with ERP security every day and there are still situations where I need to dig into the lowest levels within a system to determine what the correct security should be.

But despite the challenges, do not let your frustrations with security prompt you to take the easy way out (like assigning the System Administrator role, as we discuss in the next section). I promise that this only gets you into more trouble.

At the end of this article I link to a new security overview class that I am offering which will help guide you through all aspects of D365FO security.

2. Overprovisioning a user’s security

This is a common mistake you want to avoid at all costs. No matter how frustrated you feel about security controls, you never want to give a user more access than they need.