Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the next step in their evolving vision for unified secure access. In order to understand the new changes, consumers must first be made aware of an important brand name change – Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) will now be known as Microsoft Entra ID.
In this article, you’ll learn what you need to know about the reasoning and context behind the name change. If you use Microsoft Azure and still have questions, we are here to help.
What is Microsoft Entra?
Microsoft Entra is the identity and access product family introduced by the tech giant in May 2022. The vision was to support the growing need for secure access. At launch, the product family has three offerings —Azure AD, Permissions Management, and Verified ID. That family has now grown to include eight products: ID Governance, Workload ID, and External ID.
Developers of Entra knew that protecting identities and access was vital in a digital workplace. Cyberattacks and threats are happening more often – regardless of company size, industry, or geographic location. In the last year, Microsoft reported seeing in excess of 4,000 password attacks per second. This statistic represents an increase of nearly 3x from the 1,287 attacks per second reported in the previous year.
Cyberattacks and threats are also becoming significantly more sophisticated – capable of evading critical defenses (multifactor authentication), stealing access tokens, taking on the persona of a rightful user, and obtaining access to essential data. To assist companies in protecting their ever-increasing digital assets, Microsoft expanded its vision to include securing and governing access for any identity. With the introduction of Microsoft Entra into the Security Service Edge (SSE) category and the announcement of two new product entries – Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access. – Microsoft is working towards unifying its identity and network access portfolio under the single Entra brand. They incorporated these capabilities to help businesses establish trust in their digital experiences, interactions, and services.
These changes should streamline the customer’s secure access experience and facilitate the goal of leading with multicloud and multiplatform identity security. The name and brand change requires no action from the Microsoft customer – and it will not affect capabilities, APIs, PowerShell, sign-in URLs, SLAs, Microsoft authentication libraries, developer experiences, or tooling. According to Microsoft’s announcement email, “all deployments, configurations, and integrations will continue to work without interruption.”
The switch from Azure to Entra will also not affect customer pricing and licensing, with all existing plans remaining the same – not to mention be seamlessly mapped between Azure AD and Microsoft Entra ID plans. Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans will still integrate Microsoft Entra ID (currently Azure AD). New SKU display names—Microsoft Entra ID Free, Microsoft Entra ID P1, and Microsoft Entra ID P2—will be available on September 1, 2023.
Last month, on June 20, 2023, clients were expected to receive notifications in the Entra, Azure, and Microsoft 365 admin portals, on Microsoft websites, in Microsoft documentation, and at any other point of interaction with Azure AD. The company promises to complete the branding change across all customer-facing interfaces by the end of 2023.
Call Alliance IT For Help
If you are a company that has relied on Microsoft Azure and is looking for guidance in the transition – or if you want to learn more about how these new Microsoft products can help to protect your data security – Alliance IT is the call to make. Our team of IT experts has the expertise you require, and we offer managed services programs to ensure your support is where it needs to be.
