By Komal Sharma (MCT, Synergetics India)
Overview
In this modern era where most of the organizations have moved to digitalization, want every digital experience but can they trust it? During the pandemic when we were forced to work from home, security was the priority for everyone. How to manage the users and their access, was really a matter of concern. But what we have learned is that “Nothing is permanent but change”. All organizations are moving towards productivity and competence.
In this race, security is a concern and hence security team is under constant pressure since Resources and Identities are exposed or may be compromised. So, there is a question, how to come out of it? How to convert challenges into opportunities?
There is a need to find a solution to manage the Identity and access with less efforts & resources to connect to the world and to improve the performance of our organization.
Just imagine, if we can believe in every new digital experience and trust it blindly. Is it possible? Yes, now this is possible. Microsoft has introduced a new Identity and access product family – Microsoft Entra to overcome all our problems.
Many of you must be already using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) as an Identity and access management solution in your organization. So, what’s new in Microsoft Entra? Entra is a family of all Identity and access products. All new capabilities related to Identity and access are on one portal.
Microsoft Entra Introduction
Microsoft introduced a new product for the family of Identity & Access management-related technologies. All related technologies are now under one roof. Entra leaves behind the traditional approach of Identity and access management and captures the future vision of IAM.
Entra includes Azure AD with permission management, CIEM which is cloud infrastructure entitlement management and Verified ID for decentralized identity management.
One thing to note here is, Azure AD is now a part of Entra but it doesn’t mean that it is renamed or replaced.
Microsoft Entra Product Family
There are three main members of the Entra product family:
1. Azure AD
2. Permission Management
3. Verified ID
Azure AD
Azure Active Directory is Microsoft Identity and access management solution that connects identities to their data, apps, and devices securely. Azure AD helps organizations to overcome modern identity and access management-related issues with:
1. Secure adaptive access
2. Seamless user experiences
3. Unified identity management
4. Simplified Identity governance
Azure AD protects identities with its core capabilities like Single sign-on, Multifactor authentication, conditional access, identity protection, privileged identity management and much more.
Permission Management
Entra Permission management was earlier a part of CloudKnox Permissions Management but now Microsoft has renamed it and made it an integral part of the Entra family. Permission management keeps an eye on all the permissions allotted to identities and controls them.
Microsoft Entra is a cloud infrastructure entitlement management service that not only penetrates and gets a deep understanding of Azure portal but AWS and Google Cloud Platform too.
The main features of Permission management are:
1. Get full visibility of resources that all identities are accessing.
2. Automate the principle of least privilege to make sure the right permission of identities at right time.
3. Implementing unified cloud access policies
Verified ID
We all are very aware of the concept of identity. We use identity proof while travelling, at hotels, offices, purchasing tickets and much more. This is where we need a decentralized identity. Nowadays we use our digital identity to make our mobiles, laptops, etc to be able to access our data. We know that these credentials are managed by some organizations or sometimes even we don’t. Microsoft Verified ID makes us believe in a standard base Decentralized identity concept that gives users and organizations a better experience to control their data.
There are three main roles in a Verifiable credential solution: User, issue and verifier.
1. User, who requests for a verifiable credential.
2. Organization that creates the solution that requests for information from the user to verify his identity, is the issuer.
3. A company that verifies claims from issuers they trust.
Microsoft Verified ID, a verifiable credential solution is based on some standards:
· Quickly onboard employees, partners, and customers
· Access high-value apps and resources
· Provide self-service account recovery
· Enable credentials to be used anywhere
What’s New to Entra?
There are two new products of the Entra family introduced in a trial mode and yet to be released publicly:
Microsoft Entra Workload Identities
We are very aware of Human identities but what is workload identity? Workload identities are apps, services, containers, etc that are granted to access our device data or communicate with other services. You can call them non-Human identities or software bots.
It helps organizations to protect their apps and services by enhancing security with conditional access, containing threats and reducing risk, reviewing all the users with implementation of least usage and getting more insight into workload identities.
Microsoft Entra Identity Governance
The security team’s main goal is to make sure that the right people have the right access in an organization. Entra identity Governance boost employee productivity and security and helps to meet compliance need. It automates the process of ensuring the right access to the right user at right time for the right services.
Core capabilities of Identity Governance with Entra are:
o Entitle Management
o Lifecycle workflow
o Access review
o Privileged Identity Management
Conclusion
I was very much thrilled when Microsoft announced Entra with its new capabilities. I have already been using Azure AD from the last few years and am excited to know what’s new about Entra as a new Identity innovation.
We can never imagine an organization in a secure boundary without overcoming the challenges of Identity and access. Nowadays when many of the organizations are opting for multi-cloud platforms. According to me, Microsoft Entra is a great option to bring all the Identity and access-related technology under one umbrella. Microsoft Entra helps them not only to overcome all the Azure identity management-related problems but also to keep in mind the multi-cloud concept too.
I liked Permission management which takes an insight into all your identity permissions and Verified ID that takes the vision of decentralized identity one step ahead.
Now, Microsoft Entra can meet head-on with organizations having a multi-cloud environment to secure, identify and access for a connected world.
How to set up Microsoft Entra Labs?
In this blog, we’ve learnt what exactly is Microsoft Entra and what are the three main members of the Entra family. Now it is equally important that we learn how to set up Microsoft Entra Labs. Stay tuned with us to know how to set up the Entra Labs in part two of this blog.
Source
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-entra
Synergetics India 