Recently, Microsoft has been working very hard to package a group of products into a brand new set of products. (See more and more expanding Microsoft Defender family, Microsoft Privat privacy manager and Microsoft Purview compliance and governance brands for the latest examples.) On May 31, the company did it again with a set of identity and access products it has named for “Microsoft Entra.”
Microsoft’s position is that managing digital access is not straightforward because organizations cannot plan in advance for all possible access scenarios within an organization and third-party vendors. its three, who maintain the device outside of corporate security. That’s where Entra is meant to fit in.
Microsoft Entra includes all Microsoft identity and access products: Azure Active Directory, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) and Decentralized Identity. Azure AD is what manages everything from conditional access to passwordless authentication and Azure AD External Identity, which manages B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) connections are also part of Entra. The CIEM part of these is the rebranded CloudKnox licensing technology. Microsoft buys CloudKnox Security in 2021. Verified Identity began incubating about five years ago and launched as a public preview of Azure AD Verifiable Credentials.
Entra is designed to provide identity and access management, cloud infrastructure management, and identity verification. It will work on-premises, on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and across Microsoft and third-party apps, websites, and devices.
“Now that people are distrusting, how do they connect with partners, distribution channels and more in a multi-cloud way?” said Alex Simons, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of PM, Identity and Network Access. Identity needs to be at the heart of this, he said — and not just to verify people but also devices, IoT, and across the entire virtual supply chain.
Simons said Microsoft chose the name “Entra” because “it points to a path to a new world of business.” It is by no means a restricted gate, he added.
Microsoft is making Entra and a new admin portal associated with it, available today. As for pricing, customers who want Entra will continue to pay per user per month for Azure AD; per month active user for external identity; and each resource for permissions, says Simons. Verified IDs are part of the underlying Azure AD paid platform, but a set of paid services running on that platform will be added at some point in the future, he said.
