SPECIALIZED CONSULTING / IMPLEMENTATION SCOPE

Dynamics 365 Sales Security & ALM Governance Specialist

Production Environment Hardening, Guardrails & Deployment Controls

ROLE FOCUS:

D365 / Dataverse Security

ENGAGEMENT TYPE:

Consultant / Specialist

ENVIRONMENT:

D365 Sales / Power Platform

PRIORITY SCOPE:

Production Change Controls

ROLE OVERVIEW & CONTEXT:

The organization operates an established IT change management and release policy across its business systems. However, to safeguard critical CRM workflows, we require an experienced technical specialist to evaluate our existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Power Platform footprint and implement technical controls that physically enforce change governance. The primary outcome is stopping unauthorized or unapproved changes and preventing accidental deployment crossovers into the Production environment without paralyzing standard day-to-day administrative duties.

Core Objective: Replace process-only honor systems with robust, automated security architecture - ensuring even users with elevated privileges adhere to change approvals, segregation of duties, and secure ALM pipelines.

KEY DELIVERABLES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Production Environment Hardening: Configure granular Dataverse security roles and Azure AD (Entra ID) group-based permissions to prevent direct customisations, entity modifications, or schema edits directly within the Production environment.

- Deployment Safeguards (UAT to Prod): Implement technical barriers and approval gates that eliminate accidental promotions or manual imports from UAT directly to Production, establishing clean ALM separation.

- Privileged Access Management (PAM): Define Just-In-Time (JIT) access mechanisms, Microsoft Entra PIM roles, or break-glass governance so administrators retain troubleshooting capabilities without continuous standing modification rights.

- Dual-Track Administrative Balance: Restructure operational permissions so business support, user onboarding, licensing, and day-to-day configuration are completely decoupled from solution publishing and production metadata changes.

- Auditability & Telemetry: Activate Power Platform administrative logs, Dataverse auditing, and deployment history monitoring to alert stakeholders of out-of-band modifications.

ENGAGEMENT FOCUS AREAS:

1. Direct Schema Locks:

- Restricting System Customizer / System Administrator standing rights in Prod; leveraging managed solutions and environment security settings.

2. Pipeline Separation:

- Securing Power Platform Pipelines or Azure DevOps / GitHub release gates with service principal service connections and mandatory approvers.

3. Admin Operational Continuity:

- Designing role-tailored support personas that handle records, views, and operational tickets without granting structural solution import permissions.

REQUIRED SKILLS & TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES:

- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales & Dataverse: Deep architectural understanding of Dataverse security models, business units, role inheritance, field-level security, and solution layering (Managed vs. Unmanaged solutions).

- Power Platform Administration Center (PPAC): Proven experience managing environment tiers (Dev, Test/UAT, Prod), security groups, tenant-level isolation, and environment routing.

- ALM & Deployment Controls: Hands-on implementation of automated release controls using Power Platform Pipelines, Azure DevOps (Power Platform Build Tools), or GitHub Actions with strict approval gates.

- Identity & Privileged Access: Solid working knowledge of Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Privileged Identity Management (PIM), security group synchronization to Dataverse, and service principal authentication.

- Governance & Compliance Design: Ability to map written enterprise change management frameworks into enforceable technical guardrails and auditing baselines.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS & BACKGROUND:

- Proven track record hardening enterprise Dynamics 365 or Power Platform environments against unauthorized changes and rogue deployments.

- Experience implementing automated alerts using Microsoft Purview, Power Platform CoE Starter Kit, or Azure Application Insights for configuration drift.

- Relevant certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Solution Architect Expert, Security Operations Analyst Associate (SC-200), or Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate (PL-200).

- Strong stakeholder communication skills to balance strict compliance requirements with practical operational agility.

PROJECT PHASES & EXPECTED MILESTONES:

1. Assessment:

- Audit existing roles, current ALM paths, and administrative group mappings. Output: Vulnerability & Gap Analysis Report.

2. Architecture:

- Design least-privilege security model and deployment gate framework. Output: Governance & Access Blueprint.

3. Implementation:

- Configure Dataverse roles, pipeline protections, and PIM workflows. Output: Hardened Non-Prod & Prod Controls.

4. Validation:

- Test admin operational tasks and simulate rogue deployment scenarios. Output: Verification Sign-off & SOP Documentation.

KEY TECHNOLOGIES & COMPETENCY TAGS:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Dataverse Security Architecture, Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC), Power Platform ALM, Azure DevOps Pipelines, Microsoft Entra ID / PIM, Managed Solutions, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Deployment Gates, Audit Logging & Purview