Hi folks,   Today I’m thrilled to share that the public preview of external authentication methods in Microsoft Entra ID is scheduled for release in the first half of May. This feature will allow you to use your preferred multifactor authentication (MFA) solution with Entra ID.   Deploying MFA is the single most important step to securing user identities. A Microsoft Research study of MFA effectiveness showed that the use of MFA reduced the risk of compromise by more than 99.2%! Some organizations have already deployed MFA and want to reuse that MFA solution with Entra ID. External authentication methods allows organizations to reuse any MFA solution to meet the MFA requirement with Entra ID.   Some of you might be familiar with custom controls. External authentication methods are the replacement of custom controls, and they provide several benefits over the custom controls approach. These include:    External authentication method integration, which use

I'm thrilled to announce that Microsoft Entra External ID, our next-generation, developer-friendly customer identity access management (CIAM) solution will be generally available starting May 15th. Whether you're building applications for partners, business customers or consumers, External ID makes secure and customizable CIAM simple.    Microsoft Entra External ID     Secure and customize external identities’ access to applications          Microsoft Entra External ID enables you to:     Secure all identities with a single solution  Streamline secure collaboration  Create frictionless end user experiences  Accelerate the development of secure applications    Secure all identities with a single solution     Managing external identities, including customers, partners, business customers, and their access policies can be complex and costly for admins, especially when managing multiple

Hello friends,      I’m pleased to announce General Availability (GA) of the organizational branding role for Microsoft Entra ID company branding.    This new role is part of our ongoing efforts to implement Zero Trust network access by enforcing the principle of least privilege for users when customizing their authentication user experience (UX) via Entra ID company branding.    Previously, users wanting to configure Entra ID company branding required the Global Admin role. This role, though, has sweeping privileges beyond what’s necessary for configuring Entra ID company branding.     The new organizational branding role limits its privileges to the configuration of Entra ID company branding, significantly improving security and reducing the attack surface associated with its configuration.    To assign the role to a user, follow these steps:    1. Log on to Microsoft Entra ID and select Users.   

We’re excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Graph activity logs! Microsoft Graph activity logs give you visibility into HTTP requests made to the Microsoft Graph service in your tenant. With rapidly growing security threats and an increasing number of attacks, this log data source allows you to perform security analysis, threat hunting, and monitor application activity in your tenant.     Some common use cases include:     Identifying the activities that a compromised user account conducted in your tenant.  Building detections and behavioral analysis to identify suspicious or anomalous use of Microsoft Graph APIs, such as an application enumerating all users, or making probing requests with many 403 errors.  Investigating unexpected or unnecessarily privileged assignments of application permissions.  Identifying problematic or unexpected behaviors for client applications, such as extreme call volumes that cause throttli