Microsoft Entra: an introduction

In today’s digital era, where organizations are rapidly embracing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the complexities of identity and access management (IAM) have escalated significantly. Legacy technologies are struggling to keep pace with the ever-changing digital landscape, leaving businesses vulnerable to security threats and operational inefficiencies. As a result, there is a pressing need for innovative solutions that can streamline IAM processes while fortifying the security posture of modern enterprises.

Microsoft Entra has emerged as a game-changer in this domain, offering a comprehensive suite of identity and access technologies designed to address the intricate challenges faced by organizations operating in diverse digital ecosystems. By consolidating its IAM offerings under a unified umbrella, Microsoft Entra empowers businesses to navigate the complexities of hybrid and multi-cloud environments with unprecedented ease and confidence.

1. Introducing Microsoft Entra: A Unified Identity and Access Management Solution

In May 2022, Microsoft unveiled Entra as the collective name for its identity and access management (IAM) products, marking a significant milestone in the company’s journey towards providing a unified and comprehensive IAM solution. Since its inception, Entra has rapidly evolved into a core pillar of Microsoft’s unified ecosystem, cementing its position as a major player in the IAM arena.

Today, Microsoft Entra boasts an ever-expanding portfolio of products, each meticulously crafted to address the significant operational and security challenges inherent to modern identity and access management. This article delves into the ways in which these products are empowering organizations to enhance productivity in increasingly diverse digital ecosystems while remaining secure in the face of advanced threats that relentlessly target identities and access points.

2. The Compelling Case for Adopting Microsoft Entra

With Entra, Microsoft has developed a comprehensive collection of identity and access technologies equipped to meet the challenges of hybrid and multi-cloud environments head-on. By consolidating solutions into a single, centralized portal, Entra enables organizations to retire complex legacy infrastructure that relies on multiple technology solutions. This not only bolsters security but also reduces complexity and costs – a significant advantage for any modern workplace where IAM should serve as the foundation for both a robust security posture and a productive workforce. Integration of capabilities such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) further enhances security, making the user experience seamless and secure.

Beyond simplified access management, Microsoft’s substantial investment in Entra underscores the company’s commitment to addressing the evolving needs of businesses operating in the digital realm. Microsoft Entra ID integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft services like Azure and Microsoft 365, providing a cohesive user experience.

This commitment has also manifested in a sharp expansion of the products now under the Entra banner, with an extensive roadmap of future enhancements and innovations on the horizon, as revealed by Microsoft’s Rohit Gulati at the 2024 Identity Roadshow.

3. Exploring the Comprehensive Suite of Microsoft Entra Products

The Microsoft Entra family currently encompasses six core identity and access products, each designed to address specific aspects of modern IAM challenges. Some of these products are enhanced iterations of previously established solutions, while others are entirely new entities developed to provide additional functionality and value.

Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD)

Entra ID, formerly known as Azure AD, is Microsoft’s cloud-based, multi-tenant, core identity and access management solution. Staying true to Microsoft’s commitment to developing its IAM features, Entra ID has seen its capabilities expand in line with modern requirements. It provides the digital infrastructure necessary for employees to sign in and access external resources held in the Microsoft 365 stack, as well as an impressive array of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, in addition to those hosted on corporate networks or intranets.

A critical feature of Entra ID is its dynamic access management, which tailors user access based on roles, helping administrators maintain security and compliance efficiently. This complements the familiar Azure AD functionalities, ensuring enterprises can manage identities effectively.

As Microsoft’s flagship identity and access management technology, Entra ID offers particular value in the following areas:

• Streamlined Access Management: Entra ID simplifies the process of granting and managing access to various resources, ensuring that the right individuals have the appropriate level of access at all times.
• Enhanced Security: By leveraging advanced security features such as multi-factor authentication and conditional access policies, Entra ID helps organizations strengthen their security posture and protect against unauthorized access attempts.
• Improved Productivity: With seamless access to a wide range of applications and resources, employees can work more efficiently, reducing the time and effort required to navigate multiple authentication systems.

Microsoft Entra Identity Governance

Effective identity governance is crucial for organizations to ensure that access privileges are granted and revoked promptly as needed. Microsoft Entra Identity Governance addresses this critical requirement by enabling businesses to govern the identity lifecycle, access lifecycle, and secure privileged access for administration – not only for employees but also for business partners, vendors, and across services and applications, both on-premises and in the cloud.

While Entra ID P1 and P2 licenses offer a range of governance tools, including HR-driven provisioning, automated user provisioning, access certification and reviews, entitlement management, and Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Microsoft has extended its governance offering by bundling advanced tools into a standalone SKU. This strategic separation suggests that future governance development, which is anticipated to be substantial, will be concentrated within this dedicated product.

Additionally, Microsoft Entra Governance offers unique AI-driven access review capabilities which provide automated insights to ensure users and guests have appropriate access levels based on their roles and activities.

Some of the new capabilities within Microsoft Entra Identity Governance include:

• Lifecycle Workflows: Customize workflows and automate repetitive tasks, such as the onboarding of new employees, streamlining processes and reducing manual effort.
• Separation of Duties: Automate controls to prevent identities from obtaining excessive access, reducing the risk of fraud and ensuring adherence to security best practices.
• Connection to On-Premises Applications: Provision access to on-premises applications, enabling a seamless experience across hybrid environments.
• AI-Driven Access Reviews: Leverage artificial intelligence to ensure that users and guests have the appropriate access when they need it, based on automated insights and analysis.

Microsoft Entra Permissions Management

Permissions Management is a cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) service designed to automate the process of managing user entitlements and privileges in cloud environments. This technology is not confined to the Azure Cloud; it provides detailed insights and responses across multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Particularly for multi-cloud environments, the capability to monitor and manage entitlements across Azure, AWS, and GCP effectively reduces security risks and operational burdens. This allows IT teams to have comprehensive oversight and actionable insights, thereby enforcing least privilege policies seamlessly.

In multi-cloud environments, it can be challenging to maintain visibility and control over who has access to what resources and where. Entra Permissions Management addresses this issue by offering the following capabilities:

• Discover: The Permissions Management dashboard provides detailed visibility and a comprehensive view of every action performed by any identity on any resource. Significant permission discrepancies are reported in the “Permission Creep Index,” a single metric that evaluates the gap between permissions granted and permissions used.
• Remediate: Entra Permissions Management allows organizations to grant the appropriate permissions based on usage and activity, enforcing least privilege policies on-demand at cloud scale. For one-off scenarios, permissions can be requested in a “just-in-time” manner for a limited period, using a self-service workflow.
• Monitor: Organizations can track permission usage patterns and set up customizable alerts to detect anomalous usage. Machine learning-based anomaly detection further strengthens the security posture, while context-rich forensic reports support rapid investigation and remediation of potential threats.

Microsoft Entra Workload ID

As organizations increasingly migrate to cloud computing, they deploy software workloads (such as applications, services, or scripts) that access cloud resources. Traditionally, these workloads have been provisioned with human identities, which can lead to several problems, including limited visibility into the activity of those identities and the potential retention of redundant identities after their usefulness has expired.

Entra Workload ID solves these challenges by providing the same level of security and visibility for workload identities as for human users. This enables organizations to:

• Gain Comprehensive Visibility: Monitor the permissions, activity, and potential security vulnerabilities associated with workload identities, ensuring optimal security and compliance.
• Streamline Identity Management: Easily provision, manage, and deprovision workload identities, reducing the risk of retaining unnecessary or redundant identities.
• Enhance Security Posture: Apply the same security controls and policies to workload identities as human users, ensuring consistent and robust protection across the entire identity landscape.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Entra Verified ID is Microsoft’s decentralized identity solution, built on the principle that individuals should have control over their digital identities. Functioning like a digital passport, Verified ID is stored and managed by the user, rather than on a company server. Users have the freedom to approve or deny requests to share their identity credentials and can revoke access at any time, receiving receipts of who their credentials have been shared with.

Every time a credential is used, it is validated by the organization that issued it, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the identity information. Entra Verified ID offers several benefits to organizations:

• Fast Remote Onboarding: Verified ID enables the remote issuance, onboarding, and verification of identity credentials for new hires, typically in minutes. Employees gain secure and convenient access to organizational applications, data, and assets globally, with credentials that remain solely in their control.
• More Secure Access: Organizations can quickly verify an individual’s credentials and status, allowing them to grant access to data, assets, or applications based on the principles of least privileged access.
• Streamlined Account Recovery: Verified ID streamlines identity verification, enabling employees to reset their own passwords, reducing the burden on help desk resources.
• Custom Business Solutions: Entra Verified ID provides the ability to build custom solutions for a wide range of use cases using the developer kit, application programming interfaces (APIs), and documentation.

Microsoft Entra External ID

Entra External ID encompasses all capabilities related to the management, authentication, and security of partners, collaborators, and customers. It represents an evolution from the former External Identities offerings, which comprised Azure AD B2B (for partners and collaborators) and Azure AD B2C (for customers).

From a B2B perspective, these capabilities have largely been absorbed into Microsoft Entra ID, via its B2B collaboration tool. This allows partners to securely sign into apps and resources using their own identity and access management (IAM) solution, offering benefits such as:

• Retained Credentials: Partners can retain their own credentials for accessing resources, reducing the administrative burden of managing external identities.
• Streamlined Access Management: There is no need for organizations to manage external identities directly, simplifying the access management process.

On the B2C side, Entra External ID for Customers is currently in public preview, representing Microsoft’s vision for the future of Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM). This offering includes customer-centric tools such as full-brand customizations and advanced security features, enabling organizations to provide a seamless and secure experience for their customers.

4. Entra’s Identity-Based Secure Network Access

In the summer of 2023, as part of a major update to the Entra family, Microsoft unveiled two new products aimed at redefining secure network access. These products were developed in response to the dramatic changes organizations have experienced in their working cultures, coupled with the increasingly pervasive threat of advanced cyber attacks.

Collectively comprising a new Security Service Edge (SSE) offering, these products are:

Microsoft Entra Internet Access

Entra Internet Access is a Secure Web Gateway (SWG) solution that applies Conditional Access policies across the network, providing full traffic visibility and enabling frictionless access to internet resources. At the same time, it offers best-in-class protection for users, devices, and data.

Microsoft Entra Private Access

Entra Private Access is a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution that applies the principles of Zero Trust to provide remote users with seamless, secure access to private apps, regardless of their device, location, or network. This solution allows organizations to free themselves from legacy VPNs while reducing excessive access and preventing the lateral movement of threats.

By aligning networks with identities and endpoints for secure access built upon the core principles of Zero Trust (always verify, use least privilege, assume breach), these cloud-based solutions create network environments where users can have secure, frictionless access to public and private resources from any device or location.

5. Operational and Commercial Benefits of Microsoft Entra

According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, adopting Microsoft Entra yields significant operational and financial benefits for organizations. These include:

• 240% Return on Investment (ROI) over three years
• $2.08 million saved by modernizing IAM and consolidating vendors
• $1.52 million saved through breach-reducing risk-based policies
• 90% reduction in development wait times
• 13 hours saved per employee per year
• $4.05 million saved by productivity improvements
• 75% reduction in help desk calls due to self-service password resets

These compelling figures highlight the tangible advantages that Microsoft Entra can deliver to organizations, not only in terms of enhanced security and operational efficiency but also in terms of significant cost savings and improved return on investment.

6. Getting Started with Microsoft Entra

For Microsoft license holders, getting started with Entra’s family of products is a straightforward process. Microsoft Entra ID’s free version is included as a standard offering with any Microsoft cloud subscription, such as Azure or Microsoft 365. Admin and IT teams can easily set up and configure Entra ID, leveraging its intuitive interface and comprehensive directory services.

Entra ID also offers two premium licenses: P1 and P2. The P1 license can be accessed as part of a Microsoft 365 E3 for enterprise or Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription, or it can be subscribed to as a standalone item. Similarly, the P2 license is available to Microsoft 365 E5 for enterprise subscribers or as a standalone subscription.

Additionally, if you are an active Entra ID subscriber, you have automatic access to Entra Verified ID, currently at no extra cost.

While Entra ID comes with a suite of governance tools within its P1 and P2 licenses (with more advanced features available in P2), to take advantage of the advanced tools within Entra Identity Governance, you require an additional subscription. The same applies to the standalone products of Entra Permissions Management and Entra Workload ID.

However, each of these products offers options for free trials before committing to a subscription, allowing organizations to evaluate their suitability and potential benefits.

Microsoft’s SSE network access products, Entra Internet Access and Entra Private Access, are currently in public preview. You can find more information about these products, as well as how to book a readiness review, in the on-demand webinar provided by Microsoft.

7. The Future of Identity and Access Management with Microsoft Entra

Microsoft’s commitment to the continuous development and enhancement of its identity and access management offerings is evident in the extensive roadmap for Entra. As organizations navigate the complexities of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Microsoft Entra is poised to remain at the forefront of IAM innovation, delivering cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of modern businesses.

By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics, Entra is expected to introduce even more intelligent and automated capabilities for identity governance, access management, and threat detection. Additionally, the integration of decentralized identity solutions like Entra Verified ID is likely to gain momentum, empowering individuals with greater control over their digital identities.

Furthermore, as the adoption of cloud computing and remote work continues to grow, Microsoft Entra’s secure network access solutions, such as Entra Internet Access and Entra Private Access, will play a crucial role in enabling organizations to provide secure, frictionless access to resources from anywhere, on any device.

8. Addressing the Challenges of Identity and Access Management

Identity and access management remain the greatest challenges for organizations, particularly as they transition to hybrid and multi-cloud platforms. Legacy technologies are no longer capable of keeping up with the evolving digital landscape, leaving businesses vulnerable to security breaches and operational inefficiencies.

By expanding its range of identity and access technologies and consolidating them under one unified portal, Microsoft Entra addresses these challenges head-on. It goes beyond simply providing secure access to organizations, enabling them to provision decentralized identities under the full control of their employees. With Entra, organizations can gain visibility into the permissions their employees hold, regardless of where they operate, and manage and revoke access as needed. The integration with various apps and domains streamlines identity management across different platforms.

Moreover, Entra ensures that non-human workloads and users receive the same level of protection and visibility as human users, effectively closing potential security gaps. Identity governance capabilities within Entra allow organizations to understand the access they have granted and where, enabling them to manage and revoke it as necessary.

9. Empowering Modern Organizations with Innovative Solutions

By consolidating its identity and access management offerings under a unified umbrella, Microsoft Entra enables organizations to retire complex legacy infrastructure, reducing complexity and costs while enhancing security. With its expanding portfolio of products, Entra equips businesses with the tools they need to provision decentralized identities, manage permissions across multiple clouds and environments, and ensure that non-human workloads and users receive the same level of protection as human users. Features like active domain authentication and single sign-on (SSO) further simplify the user experience.

As organizations continue to embrace digital transformation and adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape, Microsoft Entra stands poised to be a trusted partner, providing innovative solutions that empower businesses to thrive in the digital age.

Key Takeaways

• Identity and access management remain the key security focus for any enterprise-sized business, particularly in the context of hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Microsoft Entra solves the complex challenges of identity and access in a new, cloud-enabled digital landscape by consolidating solutions into a centralized portal, allowing organizations to retire complex legacy infrastructure and reduce complexity and costs while enhancing security. Entra’s suite of products empowers users to take control of their digital identities, manages permissions across multiple cloud environments, and ensures comprehensive protection for both human and non-human identities.

Final Thoughts

Adopting Microsoft Entra is a strategic move for organizations of all sizes, offering benefits beyond security, such as improved efficiency, productivity, and streamlined processes. Entra’s suite of products helps eliminate complex legacy systems, reducing administrative burdens and freeing resources for core operations. Incorporating AI, machine learning, and decentralized identities, Entra ensures businesses stay ahead in identity and access management.

If you want to learn more on Microsoft Entra and how it can help your organization, feel free to reach out to us.

Written By:

softlanding

Softlanding is a long-established IT services provider of transformation, professional services and managed IT services that helps organizations boost innovation and drive business value. We are a multi-award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner with 13 Gold Competencies and we use our experience and expertise to be a trusted advisor to our clients. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, we have staff and offices in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary to serve clients across Canada.

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