Protecting identity from compromise is top of mind for security professionals as identity attacks continue to intensify. Earlier this year we reported that we had observed a nearly three-fold increase in password attacks per second in the last two years, from 579 in 2021 to 4,000 in 2023.1 Identity and access stands between malicious actors and web and cloud resources, making it critical to have a solution that is seamlessly integrated.
Microsoft Entra is a unified identity and network access solution that protects any identity and secures access to any application or resource, in any cloud or on-premises. We’re grateful to all of you—our customers and partners, for your generous feedback that guides our product vision, roadmap, and innovation, and for the collaborative engineering approach that has enabled us to co-create modern identity and access solutions.
Today, we are honored to announce that for the seventh year in a row, Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant TM for Access Management. We believe Microsoft’s placement in the Leaders quadrant validates our commitment to empowering our customers with a comprehensive solution powered by AI and automation.
Microsoft Entra’s mission is to help you stay ahead of the evolving digital threat landscape by making it easier to secure access to everything, for everyone, from anywhere. This year, we released several key innovations in pursuit of this goal. Here are a few recent highlights:
First, we introduced Microsoft Entra ID Governance, our complete identity governance solution that helps ensure the right people have the right access to the right resources at the right time. This cloud-delivered product includes capabilities that were already available in Microsoft Entra ID, plus more advanced tools that automate identity and access lifecycle management, and simplify access governance for on-premises, software as a service, and cloud apps and resources.
Second, we made significant progress towards offering additional phishing-resistant authentication methods in alignment with Executive Order 14028: Users will be able to sign in using passkeys managed from the Microsoft Authenticator app, which is also Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-compliant for both iOS and Android. We have also added more customization for our cloud-based certificate-based authentication (CBA) solution.
Third, Microsoft Entra ID introduced a series of marquee features, including Microsoft Entra ID Protection that help you proactively block identity takeover in real-time. These innovations include a brand-new dashboard with improved security posture insights and recommendations, new risk detections that can prevent attacks in their early phases, and an integration with Microsoft Defender XDR to correlate incidents. Strict location enforcement capabilities have also been added to continuous access evaluation (CAE), which enables Microsoft Entra ID to use those signals to revoke access and remediate potential compromise if a change in location was detected in in near real-time. As part of an ongoing commitment to token protection, Microsoft Entra ID also released sign-in session token protection to help defend against token theft attacks.
Fourth, we released the preview of new, unified capabilities in Microsoft Entra External ID, our next-generation customer identity and access management platform that unifies secure and engaging experiences for all external identities, including customers, partners, citizens, and others within a single integrated platform. These new capabilities deliver a more developer-centric platform with the latest security and governance capabilities of Microsoft Entra ID and deep integrations across Microsoft Security.
Fifth, we launched our new identity-centric Security Service Edge solution with the release of two products, Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access. This solution unifies identity and network access controls under a single policy engine, extending universal Conditional Access controls to any user and any resource across identity, endpoint and network. By bringing these two solutions into the Microsoft Entra portfolio, we’re expanding our reach beyond identity and access management to a comprehensive solution that can help secure access holistically.
We can’t wait to bring more innovations to the Microsoft Entra portfolio in this new year and continue making progress against our goal to simplify securing access to everything, for everyone.
The Microsoft Entra product family includes:
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Unified multicloud identity and network access help you protect and verify identities, manage permissions, and enforce intelligent access policies, all in one place.
You can learn more by reading the full 2023 Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Access Management report. To learn more about the Microsoft Entra portfolio and its products, visit our website.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (formerly known as “Twitter”) (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
1Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023.
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Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Access Management, by Henrique Teixeira, Abhyuday Data, Nathan Harris, Robertson Pimentel. 16 November 2023.
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