IT & Cloud
Entra ID
Also called: Azure AD, Azure Active Directory
Microsoft's cloud identity service — formerly Azure Active Directory — which authenticates users and devices and enforces access policy across Microsoft 365 and connected applications.
Identity is now the perimeter. Entra ID holds the accounts, groups, and conditional access rules that decide who reaches what from where, and single sign-on extends that to third-party SaaS. Consolidating identity there means one place to disable a departing employee instead of a checklist of twelve portals.
The controls worth enabling early are cheap and high-impact: MFA everywhere, conditional access by device compliance and location, break-glass admin accounts stored offline, and legacy authentication protocols switched off.
Related terms
- MFA
- Authentication requiring two or more independent factors — something you know, have, or are — so a stolen password alone does not grant access.
- Microsoft 365 Tenant
- A single organisation's dedicated instance of Microsoft 365, containing its identities, mailboxes, SharePoint content, licences, and security policies.
- Zero Trust
- A security model that treats no network as inherently safe, verifying identity, device health, and authorisation for every request rather than trusting anything inside a perimeter.
More IT & Cloud terms
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