Microsoft increasingly sees value in packaging groups of services into a single suite. It makes sense from a branding perspective, but also in terms of management and customer support. The latest “Microsoft” branded product is known as Microsoft Entra, which the company unveiled today (May 31).
Entra is a new suite that packages a bunch of identity and access tools under one roof. Specifically, Microsoft wants to improve digital access for its customers with a single product.
Microsoft Entra bundles all the company’s identity and access products. That means customers get Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Azure Active Directory, and Decentralized Identity.
Underpinning the whole experience is Azure Active Directory (AD), which is Microsoft’s cloud identity and authentication service. Furthermore, Entra also supports Azure AD External Identities for B2B and B2C access management.
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As for the CIEM, this is the CloudKnox permissions platform, which reached public preview earlier this year. Back in July 2021, Microsoft acquired cloud security firm CloudKnox to bolster protection on the Microsoft Azure platform.
The result was CloudKnox Permissions Management. This is a unified CIEM that allows Azure customers to manage permissions across their cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft Entra will provide a complete suite of identity and access management across cloud infrastructure, while also providing total identity verification technology. The new bundle will be available across Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and third-party apps and websites.
“Now that people are doing zero trust, how do they wire in partners, distribution channels and more in a multi-cloud way?” says Alex Simons, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of PM, Identity and Network Access.
“Moving forward, we’re expanding our identity and access solutions so that they can serve as a trust fabric for the entire digital ecosystem—now and long into the future.
Microsoft Entra will verify all types of identities and secure, manage, and govern their access to any resource. The new Microsoft Entra product family will:
- Protect access to any app or resource for any user.
- Secure and verify every identity across hybrid and multicloud environments.
- Discover and govern permissions in multicloud environments.
- Simplify the user experience with real-time intelligent access decisions.”
Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “Windows Security” button, but the most common case in Windows is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.
