What is Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory) ?
Microsoft Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory is a cloud-based directory service providing identity and access management services. It serves as a centralised identity platform for managing user identities, authentication and access to resources across Azure cloud services, Microsoft 365, and other integrated applications.
How Entra ID Works and its Key Features
Identity Management
Entra ID allows organisations to create and manage user identities, groups and security policies in a centralised manner. Administrators can define user attributes, assign roles and permissions and enforce access control policies based on business requirements.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Entra ID supports a limited capability for single sign-on, enabling users to access multiple applications and services with a single set of credentials. This improves user productivity and reduces the need for users to remember multiple passwords however is largely dependent on administrator configuration so can be inflexible for users.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Entra ID offers robust multi-factor authentication capabilities, allowing organisations to enforce additional verification steps, such as SMS codes, phone calls or biometric authentication, to enhance security and protect against credential theft.
Application Integration
Just like My1Login, Azure AD integrates seamlessly with thousands of popular SaaS (Software as a Service) applications that are considered core to the enterprise, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Google Workspace and more where these support identity protocols such as SAML or OIDC. This enables organisations to manage access to these applications centrally and enforce security policies consistently however flexibility for the workforce to enable Single Sign-On for line of business applications is limited leaving blind spots for enterprises.
Identity Protection
Entra ID includes identity protection features, such as risk-based conditional access policies, anomaly detection and security alerts. These capabilities can help organisations detect and mitigate identity-related security threats, such as account compromise and unusual sign-in activities.
Identity Governance
Entra ID provides some identity governance features, including access reviews, entitlement management and privileged identity management (PIM). These features can help organisations maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and ensure the least privilege access principle is enforced effectively.
Hybrid Identity
Entra ID supports hybrid identity scenarios, allowing organisations to integrate on-premises Active Directory environments with Entra ID. This enables improved authentication and access management across cloud and on-premises resources.
Entra ID plays a crucial role in modernising identity and access management practices, particularly in cloud-centric environments by creating a cloud-based corporate directory that can be synchronised with other services. My1Login seamlessly integrates with Entra ID to provide full Single Sign-On across the entire application estate used by the workforce, including web and Windows desktop applications, and providing the flexibility for users to integrate line of business apps that do not support identity protocols such as SAML and OIDC.
