Active Directory / Azure Active Directory Management

Enter Microsoft Entra

Today, Microsoft announced a new name for their identity product family which encompasses familiar capabilities alongside new capability launches. Microsoft Entra covers identity, including Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Permissions Management, and Verified ID. Azure AD is a familiar…

Microsoft further strengthens Identity and Security offerings by CloudKnox Security acquisition

Microsoft last week announced another acquisition, a few days after announcing the acquisition of RiskIQ. This next acquisition is CloudKnox Security, a vendor offering unified privileged access and cloud entitlement management. These technologies, sometimes also referred to as CIEM (Cloud…

Analyst Chat #77: Don't Manage Access in Active Directory Groups

Maintaining finer grained access by administering AD groups through dedicated and delegated application administrators is the reality in many organizations. Martin Kuppinger and Matthias discuss these types of indirect authorization management and why they are no good choice, even more…

Azure AD Verifiable Credentials Entering Public Preview

Microsoft announced on April 5, 2020 that its Azure AD Verifiable Credentials is now in public preview. This solution enables organizations to design and issue verifiable credentials to their users, be it enterprises issuing employment credentials to their employees, universities enrolling…

Managing Azure AD – Regardless of How You Use It

Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) has gained widespread adoption. Coming with Microsoft Azure Cloud as well as Microsoft 365 (i.e. Office 365), it appears in many organizations just because of decisions made outside of the IAM team.

What’s Really Going on in Your Microsoft Active Directory and Azure AD Infrastructure

Most small and mid-sized businesses rely on Microsoft technology in their IT infrastructure. For the vast majority of larger organizations, solutions such as Microsoft Active Directory also form a vital part of their IT infrastructure. Understanding what is going on in these infrastructures…

Oct 29, 2020: What’s Really Going on in Your Microsoft Active Directory and Azure AD Infrastructure

Most small and mid-sized businesses rely on Microsoft technology in their IT infrastructure. For the vast majority of larger organizations, solutions such as Microsoft Active Directory also form a vital part of their IT infrastructure. Understanding what is going on in these infrastructures…

Dec 02, 2020: Managing Azure AD – Regardless of How You Use It

Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) has gained widespread adoption. Coming with Microsoft Azure Cloud as well as Microsoft 365 (i.e. Office 365), it appears in many organizations just because of decisions made outside of the IAM team.

Identity and Access Management Strategies That Grow With Your Business

For these organizations, an adaptable Active Directory-centered (AD) approach can address the areas of highest impact. By adding cloud-based access request and access certification functionality to the mix, a company can achieve a basic IGA solution for a fraction of the cost, complexity,…

IAM Essentials: What are Directory Services?

Sep 09, 2020: Identity and Access Management Strategies That Grow With Your Business

For companies that don’t need a complex Identity Governance & Administration solution (IGA), account and group administration is still a priority. Every company needs a solution for at least baseline IAM (Identity and Access Management), that fits their current state but can also equip them…

Microsoft Adding New Capabilities to Azure Active Directory

Over the past years, Microsoft has spent significant effort to make Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) the central platform for identities in Microsoft environments and beyond. Microsoft now announced several new capabilities that help to support further use cases. New features in Azure AD…

Will Azure Arc Help Hybrid IT Customers to Find the Pot of Gold?

At Ignite in November 2019 Microsoft announced Azure Arc which is now in public preview. Azure Arc extends Azure Resource Manager capabilities to cover Linux and Windows servers, as well as Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure across on-premises, and multi-cloud. In French…

Access all Apps with Azure AD: A Single Identity Solution for Secure Access

Most businesses already rely on Azure Active Directory for secure, seamless access to Microsoft services like Office 365 and Azure. But with more applications being used than ever before, organizations are asking themselves what bigger role Azure Active Directory can play in securing their…

Apr 29, 2020: Access all Apps with Azure AD: A Single Identity Solution for Secure Access

Most businesses already rely on Azure Active Directory for secure, seamless access to Microsoft services like Office 365 and Azure. But with more applications being used than ever before, organizations are asking themselves what bigger role Azure Active Directory can play in securing their…

The Next Best Thing After "Secure by Design"

There is an old saying that goes like this: “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. Nothing personal against anyone in particular, but it seems to me that it perfectly represents the current state of cybersecurity across almost any industry. Although…

Regulatory Compliance a Potential Driver of Cloud Migration

Newly announced AWS offerings of Access Analyzer, Amazon Detective and AWS Nitro Enclaves discussed in my last blog post, further round out AWS’s security services and tools such as Amazon GuardDuty that continuously monitors for threats to accounts and workloads, Amazon Inspector that…

Security vs Convenience: In the Cloud, it’s Still Your Choice and Your Responsibility

Social logins are extremely popular. Instead of going through a process of creating a new account on another website, you just click on the “Continue with Facebook” or “Sign in with Google” button and you’re in. The website in question can automatically pull the…

OVHCloud Bets on Shift Back to Private Cloud

There is more to the cloud than AWS, Azure, IBM and Google according to OVHCloud - the new name for OVH as it celebrates its 20th anniversary. While the big four have carved up the public cloud between them, the French cloud specialist believes that business needs are changing, which gives…

Don’t Blame the Cloud for Capital One’s Troubles

After the recent Capital One breach, some commentators have suggested that cloud security is fundamentally flawed. Like many organizations today, Capital One uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store data, and it was this that was targeted and successfully stolen. In the case of Capital One…

The changing role of Azure AD in Enterprise IAM Architectures

For many companies, Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) was the basis for a coordinated step into the cloud, by extending the reach of their existing on-premises Active Directory to the cloud. For others, Azure AD was at the beginning just something that came with Microsoft Office…

Passwordless for the Masses

What an interesting coincidence: I’m writing this just after finishing a webinar where we talked about the latest trends in strong authentication and the ways to eliminate passwords within an enterprise. Well, this could not have been a better time for the latest announcement from…

Identity Governance - the Value of Leveraging IGA Functions from the Cloud

Even though companies need to implement Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) solutions in order to stay compliant and support their security, the deployment of IGA solutions still poses a challenge to many of them. Delivering a frictionless experience for users and employees while…

Adding Depth to Your IAM: Automating Microsoft Active Directory and Azure AD Administration

IAM and therein IGA (Identity Governance & Administration) focuses on managing identities and their access across a variety of systems. That is essential, particularly for heterogeneous environments. However, there are two aspects that aren’t well-addressed by many of…

Apr 30, 2019: Adding Depth to Your IAM: Automating Microsoft Active Directory and Azure AD Administration

IAM and therein IGA (Identity Governance & Administration) focuses on managing identities and their access across a variety of systems.

May 07, 2019: Identity Governance - the Value of Leveraging IGA Functions from the Cloud

Even though companies need to implement Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) solutions in order to stay compliant and support their security, the deployment of IGA solutions still poses a challenge to many of them. Delivering a frictionless experience for users and employees while…