Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

When we are deploying cloud applications we avail ourselves of the services of Azure AD. At the moment, we are mostly getting the data from on-premises to the cloud, as far as user entities go. We're trying to define policies based upon the company's and our projects' requirements, such as whether we need to make something public or private. This all has to be defined. We also use it for access management.

We have protected the entire tenant itself, as a federation. AAD has also become a great source of research.

Previously there were many tenants and many subscriptions within each tenant. We have been able to separate Office 365 as a separate tenant and not welcome any other applications into that. We are only using SaaS with that tenant. Later, we had different tenants, and we welcomed all types of PaaS and IaaS.

Recently, managed identities came into the market, and we are trying to adhere to automations and customization, the automation of groups, which is a major advantage. That way, people don't have to wait for a long time for manual intervention. If they raise a ticket, within a few minutes the answer can be in their mailbox with all the details.

The features I normally use are for authentication and authorization.

Single sign-on provides flexibility and helps because users don't want to remember so many passwords when logging in. It's a major feature. Once you log in, you have access to all the applications. It also enables us to provide backend access controls to our users, especially when it comes to groups, as we are trying to normalize things.

For the end-users, they can seamlessly log in to their web products, like their Outlook account. They have YAML services and SharePoint services. Everything is single sign-on and that makes them happy.

An area where there is room for improvement is the ease of use of the dashboards.

Also, if a user is working in India, and we suddenly see a login from the US, Australia, or New Zealand, we should be alerted, because we wouldn't expect that application would be used by that user in those locations at that time.

An area for improvement is that there is so much dependence on on-premises databases, in the on-premises directory services.

In terms of features we would like to see, we don't have domain controllers in Azure AD. We are also looking at how we can best migrate users from on-premises to Azure AD, and how we can welcome B2B users. We would like to see improvement in the B2B functionality. We hope that is already in the roadmap. We'd also like to see some functionality for how we can set boundaries for tenants. We have multiple tenants that we're trying to consolidate. It's definitely going to be a big challenge to consolidate two tenants, so we're looking for help in that area.

I have been using Azure AD for the last three years.

In terms of the solution's availability, I haven't seen anything negative. It's always available. There have been no issues.

I haven't seen any room for improving the scalability or performance. The capacity is good. We are managing about 5,000 users in Azure AD. We have an Ops team and there are about 10 people who maintain and manage users and groups for the production tenant. But in five months, with SaaS and PaaS services, that might go higher.

We have had many discussions with tech support for Azure AD. We are trying to install read-only domain controllers or ODCs into the cloud platform. We have had many challenges with that in terms of the network side and the business requirements. Another issue we have spoken with them about is how to do automation of service principles and of groups.

Support has been great, but there is a little room for improvement. We have had to go through many iterations and we have had to wait for a long time until the next version of the solution comes out. Overall, we get good support, but their timelines could be better.

We were using Microsoft AD, on-premises. We are now syncing all the users who are in the on-premises version to Azure AD. We are not directly creating users in Azure AD because of the dependencies. Many legacy applications are talking to the on-premises directory services. When a user is created, we are sending that user from the on-premises to the cloud through Azure AD Connect.

We are using the Premium P2 licensing. 

To explore the solution, I had to create a personal version, because I can't play with the access that we get from the company. We explore those services in the personal version first, to see how it reacts.

From the company side, we haven't had issues because the licensing works well. But on a personal level, if I could enable more trial services, at least for a year, it would be much easier to explore and suggest the best solutions.

It's an easy tool to explore if you have already worked with the on-premises data services. There is good documentation available on the Microsoft website. If Microsoft provided more time for new users to explore new features, that would help. Everyone could learn more and contribute more to their companies or to the projects that they're working on. But it is easy to learn.

Just be careful, because you are in the cloud. You have to be aware of access, AM, how the user is coming into their account, where the user is going and what the user actions are, and what access they have. Always try to enable single sign-on, so that if any fraudulent user comes into the picture, you can remove them as soon as possible. So enable those features for admin accounts and use privileged IT management, vaulting the password. You have to strictly follow the security standards, because it's open to the public when it is on the cloud. You have to be very careful about the project requirements, the end-user requirements, and what the business stakeholders need.

When we started with Azure AD, we didn't restrict much. Later, we restricted a few possibilities, such as users logging in with their social accounts, or email accounts like Yahoo accounts or Outlook. Initially it was open to all. Any user could invite a guest user and provide access, but later we restricted things with conditional management, and restricted users so that they could not connect to their Gmail accounts. We are coming up with more policies as well.

We have ongoing discussions with Microsoft Azure AD regarding how we can best protect our entities and what the behaviors should be. We have some more specific requirements in the company, related to project behavior. With IaaS, you have to welcome everyone. You have to put virtual machines in the cloud. You can use the password services and develop custom APIs and deploy them. 

We are trying to define our security policies as much as we can, as we are seeing many changes in the market and are trying to restrict as much as we can. Only users who are least privileged can have an all-access. The most privileged will have additional authentication. We're trying to differentiate.

We have to be very careful about the administrative part, so that operations can easily manage without any hassle. Because we don't have natural restrictions, we are trying to implement our own rules.

As we are moving to the cloud, we have to be very careful when it comes to Azure Active Directory. If there is a mistake and a random user can log in to the directory, they could have access to everything. A user should not have access to whatever he wants, so setting up the right level of authentication and authorization is important. Use IAM very effectively. Identity and access management is a powerful space where one has to be very careful in choosing and configuring policies and standard procedures. We're trying to define that and be careful when with all platforms, whether IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS. At the moment it's going well.

We are merging many things in the tenant. Before, we only had SaaS. We are trying to welcome PaaS and IaaS to use the same production tenant. We have to exercise caution for everyone, all the individual policies, groups, and service principles. We have to enable all the features that you are capable of, such as user sign-in permissions, and application sign-ins. That has to be continuously monitored.

We have a good rapport with Microsoft. We have good support. We'll be exploring all the new services, like the managed entities and their other services that have come up. We are trying our best to explore and use the latest features that are available.

We primarily use the solution for our AD. Azure AD and Microsoft Entra ID are basically the same, they are currently rebranding. I basically manage users and permissions.

It's made it easy to manage our users. It's also easy to deploy across the company. It pulls over the Exchange and does everything together in one go. You just have to get the licenses.

The login process is easy. It's very user-friendly for users. We can check the logins and handle user management. It's quite simple and easy to use.

It provides a single pane of glass for managing users and access. It's easy for users to handle multiple devices. It makes the sign-on experience better. It can easily teach users how to use the authenticator app.

I'm able to get reports on the database to help give visibility to security. I don't handle security, however. I'm there for support. People can use the data to perform investigations. 

The ID is quite useful. The Azure ID admin center can manage all identity access tasks across an organization. We can easily set up users. It's something you need in every company. Most of the basic stuff is done for users.

The Verified ID is useful for authentication. You can set it in your privacy settings. 

The solution has helped us save time.

The experience overall has been good for employees when they need to get an ID. If you need an extra license, it's just a matter of clicking one button.

We'd like to be able to link to non-Mircosft products, like Linux. There isn't much open source that links up with Azure. Most open source, however, can link up with AWS.

I've been using the solution for four years now. 

The solution is stable. it's dependable. 

We have about 100 users on the solution. 

It's easy to scale up or down. It does what it needs to do. You can always edit or delete resources as well. 

We haven't had any issues. Therefore, I have not really dealt with technical support. 

Positive

I was also working with Microsoft Active Directory on-prem. I'm new to this company; I've worked with other things in other companies before. 

I've used Okta in the past. I find the Azure pricing more user-friendly and I find it's better in terms fo team collaboration. For example, with this, you can also implement Microsoft Defender which can help you monitor users as well.

We have it deployed to the cloud; it's too expensive to maintain on-prem hardware. 

I was not directly involved in the deployment of the solution. 

Only two people have to maintain the product. 

The pricing is expensive. It's in US dollars. I'd rate the affordability of pricing six out of ten. 

I'm not sure if the company evaluated other options. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. My advice would be to stay virtual and not on-prem or you'll have to pay more.

We primarily use the solution for most of our enterprise identity management. 

It's improved our company through the security policies. It's helped improve our security posture. 

It's pretty easy to implement. In most of the apps nowadays, it has the ability to use multifactor authentication, SSO.

The control is great. It offers good conditional access.

It helps with managing user access via one pane of glass in most cases. 

The security policies we are applying are pretty well structured. 

The solution is nice to use. Microsoft did a good job.

My assessment on Microsoft EntraID admin center for managing all identity and access as our organization. It's great. It's very well organized, pretty straightforward, and easy to use. It's not just that it's easy to use, it's very intuitive. Everything is easy to find. 

We use Microsoft Entra ID conditional access features and improve the robustness of our zero-trust strategy to verify users. 

The permission management feature is good. 

The visibility and control are very good. The whole intro ID concept is pretty intuitive. Even if you have never used this and you have some experience in IT, you will be able to handle the solution easily.

It's helped our IT department save time. It also helps with speeding up processes. I can't speak to the exact amount of time saved per week, however.

The solution helps the company save money. 

It's positively affected the employee user experience. 

It's just been renamed. That said, I can't speak of room for improvement. There may be areas that could be better, however, I haven't thought too much about that. 

I would change the device access a bit. It's very difficult. I would add some features. I would like to be able to authenticate Wi-Fi users using the Azure ID. However, my understanding is it needs to be from both sides, from the vendor that is creating devices for the Wi-Fi and for the networking part and Microsoft. 

The company has been using the solution since before I arrived. I have used it for around four or five years. 

The solution is stable. I've never seen big issues. It's pretty much a stable product. 

Sometimes Microsoft has small issues, however, nothing that would cause the entire company to not be able to work for a whole day. 

More than 1,000 people are currently using the solution. 

It is a scalable solution for sure. 

I've never used technical support. 

I've used a few different solutions. Mostly I've used Active Directory. It does the same thing; it has just been renamed. 

I was not a part of the implementation. It was done before I joined the company. 

It may require a bit of maintenance, however, it's not a task that is part of my department. 

I don't deal with pricing. It may state the cost online. 

I did not evaluate other options. 

I'm a user.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd advise others to use it. Even the free tier has a lot of features that even a small company would benefit from. 

We had the need to integrate the solution that we had on-premise and the email-based identities, so we looked for a solution from the same provider that could establish us and provide a synchronized identity (what we know today as SSO) in our resources and thus be able to log in with the same identities we had on-premise and in the cloud. 

We wanted to take advantage of that synchronized identity quickly, simply, and safely. It was important to understand that users today want to have a single password for all resources, be they applications, or devices, in order to help them so that they are not constantly learning different credentials and can thus be faster and more efficient when establishing a single login.

It has given us the ability to be able to establish single sign-on identities in which we can establish credentials no matter where we are, whether it is on-premises or in the cloud, in a hybrid cloud, or in an additional connection from another cloud where we share equipment or host. 

Additionally, we enabled more protection functions so that it is well protected even though it is a single credential for each environment and established for any environment it could be safely protected.

Its most outstanding feature is the ability to integrate, segment, establish, add and configure an identity for multiple domains in different regions, locations, or types of clouds. It is one of the hybrid solutions that can be used the most to establish an entity configuration in multiple environments. It is a tool that has given us the ability to establish identity security issues to share and perimeter segment the security of an organization, a domain, and multiple clouds in a fast, simple, and well-established way, which has allowed us to be more efficient.

I want to see new functionalities for the active directory. I would like to be able to establish that when you log into computers locally, it is installed on a laptop and you can enable the MFA feature that is currently not available for local computers or Windows on-or off-premise - thus being one of the characteristics that can give greater added value to information security issues. 

If this feature was available on computers, it would help us in the future to avoid security breaches, information loss, or data backup vulnerabilities. In many cases, this could generate a complication. However, we always want to innovate, and the Innovation part is always to ensure that any place, device, or management that we are going to establish at the computational level is 100% secure.

We've used the solution for one year and two months.

This solution is useful for user management because it is integrated with DNS.

The solution is deployed on cloud and on-premises. We're using the latest version.

We have about 200-250 users. All of our users have local and Active Directory. We don't have plans to increase usage.

It's user friendly.

The solution could be cheaper.

We have been using this solution for about five years.

It's stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support is good.

Installation is straightforward. It only took a couple of hours to set everything up.

We pay a yearly license. Licenses are very expensive.

We primarily use the product for the authentication for all of Office 365. It is also my single sign-on solution.

The solution is stable.

It's a very easy product to set up.

The product can scale well.

Technical support has been great.

It's an affordable solution.

The synchronization with my AD is not the best. The synchronization between my AD and Azure AD needs improvement. For example, for reports, et cetera, due to the fact that now I have two different ADs - one for local AD and another for Azure AD, the types of fields in the local AD do not sync with Azure AD. It's completely different.

I've been using the solution for four or five years at this point. 

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. The performance is good. 

The scalability is great. You can expand it as needed. We have about 2,000 users on the product right now. 

We've used technical support in the past. They have always been excellent. We're quite happy with its capabilities. 

Previously, I used Okta. I switched to Azure AD due to the fact that it's part of Office 365. It does not have a cost. It's not exactly free; it's part of the Microsoft bundle.

We found the implementation process to be quite straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

It's pretty inexpensive to use the product, as it comes with the general Mircosoft bundle. Its costs are baked into using Microsoft in general. It makes it pretty affordable. 

I'm an end-user of the product.

We're always on the latest version of the product. Being on the cloud ensures we are always up-to-date on versions. 

I'd rate the product at an eight out of ten.

We have users, groups, and applications, and the purpose of this product is authentication, authorization, and attestation. We use it for the services connected to those three "A"s. The use cases in all organizations are more or less the same, even if some side services differ. Azure AD is used for authentication and authorization. It's about managing identities and granting access to applications.

It has features that have definitely helped to improve our security posture. The identity and access management, at the end of the day, are about security. It also offers features like multi-factor authentication, Privileged Identity Management, and access review and attestation, and all of these are connected to security and typically help improve security posture.

Many of its features are valuable, including: 

• facilitating application authentication 
• privileged access management 
• processes for attestation
• access reviews.

The multi-factor authentication, similar to when you use your mobile banking application when you want to do a transaction, doesn't rely only on your username and password. It triggers a second factor, like an SMS to your mobile. It requires another factor for authentication. This is one of the standard services Microsoft offers with Azure AD Directory.

Privileged identity management is also a standard feature of Azure AD for privileged accounts. We make sure we do privileged role activation when it's needed so that we do not have sensitive roles active every day.

A lot of aspects can be improved and Microsoft is constantly improving it. If I compare Azure AD today with what it was like five years ago, or even three years ago, a lot of areas have been improved, and from different angles. There have been improvements that offer more security and there have been some improvements in the efficiency domain. Azure AD is not a small product. It's not, say, Acrobat Reader, where I could say, "Okay, if these two features are added, it will be a perfect product." Azure is a vast platform.

But if we look at multi-factor authentication, can it be improved? Yes. Perhaps it could cope with the newest authentication protocols or offer new methods for second or third factors.

I'm also willing to go towards passwordless authentication. I don't want anyone to have passwords. I want them to authenticate using other methods, like maybe biometrics via your fingerprint or your face or a gesture. These things, together with the smart card you have, could mean no more passwords. The trends are moving in that direction.

When it comes to identity governance, the governance features in Azure AD are very focused on Microsoft products. I would like to see those governance and life cycle management features offered for non-Microsoft products connected to Azure AD. Currently, those aspects are not covered. Microsoft has started to introduce Identity Governance tools in Azure AD, and I know they are improving on them. For me, this is one of the interesting areas to explore further—and I'm looking to see what more Microsoft offers. Once they improve these areas, organizations will start to utilize Microsoft more because, in that domain, Microsoft is a bit behind. Right now, we need third-party tools to complete the circle.

In addition, sometimes meeting the principle of least privilege is not easy because the roles are not very granular. That means that if you are an administrator you need to do small things connected to resetting passwords and updating certain attributes. Sometimes I have to grant access for the purposes of user management, but it includes more access than they need. Role granularity is something that can be improved, and they are improving it.

Again, if I compare Azure AD today to what it was like three years ago, there have been a lot of improvements in all these domains. But we could also pick any of these specific feature domains in Azure AD and have in-depth discussions about what could be improved, and how.

We have been using Azure Active Directory for more than five years.`

Azure AD is very scalable. The only concern is around role-based access control limitations at the subscription level. That is something Microsoft is improving on. Currently, per subscription, you can have a maximum 2,000 role assignments. Sometimes big organizations hit the limit and need to implement workarounds to resolve that limitation. But that is something Microsoft has already confirmed it is improving. That is a limitation of the Azure platform, it's not specific to my organization. A smaller organization may never hit the limit, but bigger organizations do.

Apart from that, their application integrations, the service, MFA, and everything else, are quite scalable. It is moving in the right direction.

Setting up Azure AD, is about moving toward the cloud journey. I cannot say setting up Azure AD is easy, but on the other hand, organizations are not moving to the cloud in one go. It's not all or nothing, that you have it or you don't have it. It depends on which services you are receiving from Azure AD. Some organizations, like ours, start with a limited number of services.

You usually start with syncing your identities to the cloud so that you can offer your employees certain cloud services. You want to enable them to use certain SaaS applications, where they are relying on a cloud identity, and that's why you need to have your accounts in the cloud. Without that, you cannot grant them access.

Later, you may offer the ability for business partners to use and benefit from certain cloud applications, and gradually the use cases increase. For example, someone may become a privileged user to take responsibility for an application and manage it. When that happens you start to think about what other features in the Azure platform you can offer to do administration in a more secure way. Or, once you have thousands of users benefiting from cloud applications, how can you make sure that you protect their assets and their data? That leads you to start implementing other security features, such as multi-factor authentication. Over time, you may have users benefiting from Office 365 and they need to collaborate by using Teams and SharePoint. Again, you start to build something else around that.

Whether large or small, organizations are on a journey, where they start from on-premises with servers and all these server rooms and applications in the organization. They then shift workloads to the cloud. That process is still ongoing in my organization and in many organizations. Ten years ago, workloads were all on-premises. Five years ago, maybe 90 percent were on-premises. Today it might be 50 percent cloud and 50 percent on-premises. There is value from the cloud: elasticity and flexibility, even for big organizations. A server on-premises is a different story compared to having it on the cloud. If I need to upgrade a server on the cloud, it takes five minutes. If it's on-premises, I need to order hardware and then change the hardware. The usage of Azure Active Directory is due to the evolution of the cloud.

The bottom line is that the implementation is gradual. It's not difficult or easy, although we started with things that were easy to adopt, and then we continued the journey.

The staff required for maintenance of Azure AD depends on how you organize your support. Some organizations outsource their end-user support to other companies, while other organizations staff that completely internally. It can also depend on the users. Is your organization a global organization or a small, local organization? For us, to make sure we maintain the support and availability and all the services we need, including change management, we need at least 15 to 20 resources for a global application with more than 20,000 users, to maintain the platform.

We worked with a lot of consultants for Azure AD. There are many features and no one expert or professional can help with all aspects. Organizations, during their journeys, have to work with different partners and integrators. It may be that there is a specific application you need to integrate with Azure AD and you need some skills there. It may be that you want to better manage Azure resources, so you would talk to a different type of resource. You may want to increase your identity security scores, depending on how you configure Azure AD, and for that, you would need to talk to an Azure security expert. I think this applies to all big enterprises. We need different skills to better utilize Azure, including Azure AD, and to do processes in a more secure way.

We have Microsoft Professional Services. That's the primary source for many organizations that are utilizing Microsoft services. If you have an enterprise agreement or a unified agreement with Microsoft, they offer you consulting services. Of course, you have to pay for Professional Services, but we get value there. The number-one consulting and integration support provider is Microsoft.

They also work with certified partners like Accenture or Avanade. These organizations are connected with Microsoft and they offer consultancy services to enterprises like ours. Depending on the subject, we may use services from any of these providers. We usually go with Microsoft-certified partners.

Multi-factor authentication means you need to do an extra step, but that is normal because the attack surface is wider. We want to make sure you are who you say you are. That extra step impacts the end-user experience, but it's needed. The way authentication happens today is far different from 10 years ago. It may result in some added difficulty, but it is there to protect employees, organizations, customers, business partners, IT assets, data, et cetera.

Our use case depends on the client, their project, and what they want to deploy. 

1. The solution can be deployed for security purposes. Multi-factor authentication is being deployed as a second layer of authentication, especially during this COVID-19 time, because everything has to stay secure. 
2. Almost every organization uses the software as a service (SaaS) part. Because of the pandemic right now, a lot of companies are moving many things to the cloud, like virtual machines (VMs) and virtual networks. It doesn't invalidate the fact that some companies don't want to have control on-premises. 

Everything depends on the solution or what the client wants.

We use it for PaaS and IaaS.

In terms of identity management, it helps to improve security posture. It generally helps in terms cloud security, simplicity, and single sign-on for multiple apps.

In terms of improvement, there should be more flexibility and conditional access. There is a lot of flexibility already, but there are some technologies that should be embedded and integrated into it for a more flexible, customized experience. Also, there should be more tools for analysis for clients, e.g., there should be more flexibility aimed at end users. Regular IT guys for each company should be able to use the tools to troubleshoot a certain level of analysis in their environment.

The security part should be improved overall. 

The visibility in the GUI is not good for management. There are a lot of improvements that could make it better. It should be more user-friendly overall. It is not user-friendly because everything keeps changing on the platform. I can understand it because I know the platform,  am familiar with it, and use it every day. However, for a lot of clients, they don't use it every day or are not familiar with it, so it should be more user friendly.

I have been using it for four to five years.

Availability for Azure AD as a whole is 99.95 percent. It is simpler and more available than the way technology used to be previously.

It is very scalable. When you talk about licensing, you have the option to scale up or scale down. For example, you purchase 50 seats of licenses and assign 45 licenses, then for some reason, you fire 10 employees. Once you fire them, you will probably block their identity access and single sign-in. After that, you can decide to reduce the number of licenses. On the other hand, if you acquire 10 licenses and employ five new people, then you can scale up by adding more five licenses that month. So, it helps you to scale up or scale down easily.

In another example, if you have acquired five virtual machine instances, then are using more in terms of the processor, you can scale up. It depends on the configuration you have. If you have done the setup and everything from the beginning, then you can say, "If the processor level reaches 80 percent, you want to add another two virtual machine instances." On the other hand, if you deployed five virtual machine instances, but your usage of those processors is lower than 30 percent, then you should scale down. So, if you have five licenses and you want to scale down by one, then you can scale it down so you can reduce your costs.

I would rate the technical support as a nine out of 10.

When I set it up two years ago, it was easy, not complex. It didn't take much time at all to set up.

A lot of people sign in or set it up with a Google account, Yahoo account, or Microsoft account, which is not the global administrator. A lot of people think that this is the global administrator. They don't understand that the account might have an extension and don't see this until that account gets locked out. That is when they have problems signing in. The setup is not that complex. It is just that the user experience overall needs improvement here.

The deployment process depends on what you are trying to achieve and the technology that you are trying to deploy, e.g., are you trying to deploy SSO, set up device writeback, or do a regular AD Connect setup? Everything depends on the objective or the overall goals of what you want to achieve.

Even after it has been deployed, one or two users may have problems with their account in terms of multi-factor authentication or the way it has been set up. I work with them to troubleshoot these issues.

Sometimes, the priority is to set up AD Connect, which integrates your on-premises to Active Directory. You must make sure your server is up and running. Apart from that, you need to set up your tenant, which is your profile admin center. 

If they want to download and install their tools, then we can connect to their on-premises for synchronization. So, it helps collect on-premises data and put it into the cloud. 

You can also install PowerShell. 

Everything needs to be considered for the requirements and if it is within the budget, then you can come up with a solution, whether it is SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS. 

Since people might not be very familiar with the platform, I have developed a system for how to use, deploy, or utilize the technology.

At the end of the day, it is about the overall goal because everything comes with a cost. Azure AD comes in different ways and shapes, e.g., SaaS is different from IaaS or PaaS, though it is still the same platform. 

Whether you are a small business or large business, you can always enjoy a very secure cloud platform. 

I would rate Azure AD as a nine out of 10.