Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

The use case for this solution is the access to Office 365, Azure subscriptions, and several software as a service platforms as well as other SaaS-developed applications that we provide access to, such as, OpenID Connect, OAuth, or SAML.

It is a central point where we provide the cloud lock-in for our company. We focus the multi-factor authentication within Azure AD before jumping to other clouds or software as a service offerings. So, it is the central point when you need to access something for our company within the cloud. You go to Azure AD and can authenticate there, then you move from there to the target destination or the single sign-on.

Azure AD added a different layer. We were able to add multi-factor authentication for cloud applications, which was not possible before. We also may reduce our VPN footprint due to the Azure AD application proxy. We have a central point where we have registered our software as a service applications that we obtain from other providers or the applications that we host ourselves.

The most valuable feature is the possibility to create multi-tenant applications alone, or in combination with Azure Active Directory B2C. So, you can provide access to applications for your external partners without having to care about the accounts of external partners, because they will stick it in there as an AD tenant. That is the feature that I like the most.

The solution has features that have helped improve our security posture: 

• A tagging mechanism that we use for identifying who is the owner of an application registration. 
• Conditional access and multi-factor authentication, which are adding a lot to security. 
• The privileged identity management feature that has arisen off privileged access management. This is helping a lot when providing access to certain roles just-in-time. 

They are also still developing several other features that will help us.

It does affect the end user experience. It depends on where they are. When they are within the corporate network, then they already have a second factor that is automatically assigned to them. When they are outside of the company, that is when they have to provide a second factor. That is mostly a SMS message. Now, with the Microsoft Authenticator app that you can install on your mobile phone, we are shifting towards that. This has reduced errors because you may just say that you confirm a message on your mobile phone instead of typing the six-digit code, hoping that you are still in time, and that you entered it correctly. So, it does affect our employees. We try to be up-to-date there.

Mostly, it affects security. It is an obstacle that you have to climb. For example, if you have to enter the code in from the SMS message, then you have to wait for the SMS message to arrive and copy the code, or you have to transfer the code from the SMS message into the field. We reduce that workload for employees by having them be able to receive a message on their phone, then confirm that message. So, security is less of an obstacle, and it is more natural.

The user administration has room for improvement because some parts are not available within the Azure AD portal, but they are available within the Microsoft 365 portal. When I want to assign that to a user, it would be great if that would be available within the Azure AD portal.

It would be awesome to have a feature where you can see the permissions of a user in all their Azure subscriptions. Right now, you have to select a user, then you have to select the subscription to see which permissions the user has in their selected subscriptions. Sometimes, you just want to know, "Does that user have any permissions in any subscriptions?" That would be awesome if that would be available via the portal.

I have been using it for more than two years now.

The stability is very good. They had a problem recently that was hopefully the exception. 

I am looking forward to the adjustment of the SLA that they increased from 99.9 percent to 99.99 percent. With this increase, which should happen on the first of April (not an April joke), this should be a huge improvement for the visibility towards the world because this is a commitment by Microsoft, saying, "We are taking care of Azure AD." I think that is a very good thing.

From my point of view, it scales very well. There are different possibilities to take care of it, depending on what you want to achieve. Lately, they introduced something like administration units, where you can achieve that even a bit further to restrict the access of your administrator to a certain group. So, that should be really helpful for even better scaling.

One company has around 50,000 users and another company has around 200 users. For the bigger company, there are several people involved, three to four people. They are taking care of application registrations as well as the Azure AD Connect synchronization to see if there are any errors, then clear those errors. However, it is mostly the application, registration, and configuration of the Azure AD.

The technical support is great. We have access to a special unit within Microsoft where we have additional support besides the technical support. So, it has been really good working with Microsoft.

We have other tools: 

• Red Hat SSO
• OpenID Connect
• OAuth
• Azure Domain Federation.

We just removed the Azure Domain Federation (AD FS), thanks to the Azure AD.

Deployment time really depends on how you set up your Azure AD. You might: 

• Want to set up Azure AD Connect, then the process takes longer. 
• Just use Azure AD, then the process is much faster. 
• Directly connect to another source of truth, then there is something in-between. 

It really depends on your situation. I would say it takes between an hour and a week.

For the company, I didn't set it up. I did set it up for myself, but that was a simplified situation and I found the process to be straightforward.

Make sure that you get the most out of your Office 365 licenses for Azure AD. If you have additional concerns for users who don't have an Office 365 license, consider Azure AD Premium P1 and P2. Be aware that you have to evaluate your license usage beforehand.

Consider the usage of Azure AD Premium P1 and P2 when you are not assigning Microsoft or Office 365 licenses. This is really important to get access to good features, like conditional access, privilege identity management, and accessory use.

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

It underpins our application authentication and security requirements for internal users.

During the pandemic, it helped us carry on working securely as a business.

Azure Active Directory hugely improved our organization’s security posture. The ability to control access to resources has vastly improved.

We very much like Conditional Access. We also like the risky sign-ins and Identity Protection. These features provide us the security that lets us fulfill our security requirements as a company.

Azure Active Directory features have helped improve our security posture. The remote working has been a massive help during the pandemic.

The solution has made our end user experience a lot easier and smoother.

On-premise capabilities for information and identity management need improvement but I know these are in pipeline.

I have been using it for five or six years.

The stability has improved over the last two to three years.

It has fantastic scalability. Globally, we have about 80,000 users. 

In each territory there are on average around 40 people managing the solution on the admin side. We also have SMEs for the harder tasks. Then you have people, like me, who are architects and determine approach and create designs.

Microsoft Premier Support is very good. We make good use of it. 

The free support is okay.

For mobile device management we used to have MobileIron and Blackberry. Those products have been removed in favour of Intune and Azure AD features. Other legacy security services will be removed in preference for the Azure equivalents. Strategically, Azure AD makes more sense for us. Cloud first is the strategic direction within my company.

It is a predeployed solution, creating the links between the on-premise system and SaaS system is moderately easy.

Our deployment took a month.

For a non-complex organization, the deployment process would be a lot easier than it is for a complex organization. There are a lot of business processes that need to be determined as well as a lot of conversations. The technology side of things is the easy bit. It is the design that takes awhile.

It was all done internally and using Microsoft Partners

We have only really bought into the solution over the last 12 months or so. We expect to see cost returns in the next 12 months.

If you get rid of all the products providing features that Azure suite can provide, then it makes sense cost-wise.

Microsoft Premier Support is an additional cost to the standard licensing fees.

Azure Active Directory and its feature set under a single vendor are unique in our market.

Compared to how it was five years ago, the solution is has really matured.

Make sure that business requirements are understood upfront and a design is in place before any services are deployed. Ensure the people deploying it understand the capabilities and implications of choices.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.

I use Microsoft Entra ID daily as an end customer in an enterprise environment. We are using it for very simple use cases such as authenticating with SSO to third-party solutions.

In a lot of situations, it is easy and free or almost free to use Microsoft Entra MFA.

It could be better if a simple member could understand more easily the prices of the products and packages offered by Microsoft. Additionally, after the first three years of a bigger package, renewal prices could be more transparent as they tend to increase significantly.

I have been working with Microsoft Entra ID for approximately five years.

I haven't had any bad experiences with its stability in the last five years. It works consistently, and any downtime can be monitored through Microsoft State Data Monitor.

Our customers are small businesses, so scalability is not a significant concern for us.

I have a direct contact with the Microsoft Hungarian team. They manage our problems, especially on the enterprise side, and I have heard no negative feedback regarding their response times or SLAs.

Positive

The setup experience was not difficult and I would rate it as eight out of ten. It just required some time to set everything up correctly.

We consulted with the Microsoft Hungarian team for any enterprise-level issues.

Initially, customers can get good prices for a three-year package, but renewal prices tend to increase significantly. If a customer looks for an alternative solution after three years, we often find it cheaper or the same as continuing with Microsoft.

I've worked with the Microsoft Tensor Solution and CI Mentech. We also considered other authentication systems like Ping, Kaseya, and Symantec VIP. In terms of SASE, I've had experience with Netskope, Cloudflare, and Palo Alto.

If you consider SASE aspects, Microsoft Entra is not a leader solution. There are stronger competitors in SASE, like Netskope and Palo Alto, and it may not be the best idea to rely solely on Microsoft solutions if your operation runs on Microsoft.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

I set up Azure Active Directory for many customers of the company I work for. I'm an implementer. It is the basis of identity and access for all the tenants we are using for our customers.

Microsoft Entra helps our clients save a lot of time, especially with the many automation processes that we can leverage to facilitate our work. The amount of time saved depends on the customer's needs. In general, on average I would estimate it saves them 40 percent in terms of time. But in some cases, it could be up to 70 percent.

It also helps them save money because they can work with fewer employees, or they don't have to hire more employees to do tasks that can be automated.

Another benefit is that it provides satisfaction at the administration level. On the user level, the ease of use makes it easy to understand without any limitations.

And it provides quite a good level of security for all users.

All the features of the solution are helpful. Among them, one of the most important is the Conditional Access. It helps affect a Zero Trust strategy positively.

Also, I use Entra Permission Management to distribute the roles among all users according to management requests. Microsoft provides reports for visibility and all kinds of controls where you can see the users and their access. Permission Management helps reduce the risk surface when it comes to identity permissions. It supports adaptive controls and that helps me in defining the right controls for users.

I would like them to improve the dashboard by presenting the raw data in a more visual way for the logs and events. That would help us understand the reports better.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for about three years.

It's stable. I haven't experienced any downtime or breakdowns with the product.

It's scalable.

I'm satisfied with their support. 

Neutral

It's easy to set up. 

The amount of time needed to set up Azure Active Directory depends on each customer's use case. It will take at least three to four hours for a small organization, and in that scenario you wouldn't need more than one person to set it up. For larger organizations, it may take a week and we would need two to three persons.

Our customers are looking for advanced features and processes for it to be cost-effective for their organizations. They see it as an overpriced product. They are enjoying using Azure Active Directory, but they are looking for better prices.

Just follow the book.

My primary use case is Azure SSO. Then, it is a hybrid synchronization of users and computers, and also for SCIM provisioning.

Using this product has helped improve our security posture. I don't handle security directly, but I know that our security team was able to identify logs containing erratic behavior, such as logins that were not authentic. They were able to identify and solve those problems.

This solution has improved our end-user experience a lot because previously, users had to remember different passwords for different applications. Sometimes, the integration with on-premises AD was a little bit difficult over the firewall. However, with Azure, that integration has become seamless. The users are also happy with the additional security afforded by multifactor authentication.

One of the benefits that we get from this solution is the Azure hybrid join, where my presence of the domains is both on-premises and on the cloud. It has allowed us to manage the client machines from the cloud, as well as from the on-premises solution. We are currently building upon our cloud usage so that we can manage more from the Azure instance directly.

Our cloud presence is growing because most people are working from home, so the management of end-users and workstations is becoming a little challenging with the current on-premises system. Having cloud-based management helps us to manage end-users and workstations better. This is because, with an on-premises solution, you need a VPN connection to manage it. Not all users have a VPN but for a cloud-based solution, you just need the internet and almost everyone now has an internet connection.

The most valuable feature is the single sign-on, which allows any application that is SAML or OAuth compatible to use Azure as an identity provider for seamless sign-in.

I like the SCIM provisioning, where Azure is the single database and it can push to Google cloud, as well as Oracle cloud. This means that the user directory is synchronized across platforms, so if I am managing Azure AD then my other platforms are also managed.

In a hybrid deployment, when we update the UPN or email address of a user who has license assigned, it does not get updated automatically during normal sync. This means that we have to update it manually from Azure, which is something that needs to be corrected. Essentially, if it's a hybrid sync then it should happen automatically and we shouldn't have to do anything manually.

Azure AD DS allows only one instance in a particular tenant, which is something that could be improved. There are people that want to have AD DS on a per-subscription basis.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for more than three years.

Other than a few global outages, I have not seen any specific outages to the tenant that we use. In the typical case, we haven't faced any issues.

The scalability has been good. For the infrastructure that we have developed, there were no issues. We have nothing in terms of abnormal outages or any abnormal spikes that we have observed. Overall, scalability-wise, we are happy with it.

We have thousands of users on the Azure platform. The entire organization is on Azure AD, and everyone has a different, specific role assigned to them. Some people are using the database, whereas somebody else is using other infrastructure service, and the same is true for all of the different features. We have different teams using different features and I am part of managing identities, which involves using Azure AD and its associated features.

The support from Microsoft is very good. I would rate them a nine out of ten. They are responsive and very knowledgeable.

Prior to Azure AD, we used on-premises Active Directory.

The initial setup was not very complicated because there are very good articles online, published by Microsoft. They give detailed steps on the process and including what challenges you may face. In our setup, the articles online were sufficient but suppose you run into any issues, you simply reach out to Microsoft for support.

Taking the purchases, planning, and everything else into account, it took between three and four months to complete the deployment.

Our in-house team was responsible for deployment. In a few cases, we reached out to Microsoft for support.

We have not evaluated other options. The reason is that the integration between Azure AD and on-premises Active Directory is seamless and easy. Both solutions are by Microsoft.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Azure AD is to consider the size of their environment. If it's a large on-premises environment then you should consider a hybrid model, but if it's a small environment then it's easy to move to the Azure cloud model directly. If it's a small environment then Azure AD is also available on a free license. This is how I would suggest you start looking at having a cloud presence.

Azure AD is easy to integrate and manage, and it will reduce your capital cost a lot.

In summary, this is a good product but there is always scope for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for MFA; to access apps such as Teams or Outlook, two-factor authentication with our mobile phones is required.

We also use Authenticator to assist our clients with re-enrolling, moving, and adding new devices. 

The solution helps us keep our data secure and prevents security breaches, malware, etc. The app also provides us with options regarding our authentication preferences.

The two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security for our organizational data, so Microsoft Authenticator plays a crucial role in making our confidential data more secure.

The solution offers multiple authentication methods via text, call, or the app. This gives us many options and flexibility when it comes to MFA.

Our users sometimes experience issues from having multiple Microsoft accounts, which can cause some confusion and hassle.

It would be good to see the incorporation of fingerprints and Face IDs as authentication options. This would simplify the authentication process for end users, especially those who aren't as tech-savvy. It is also a consideration for visually impaired people, for example.

We have been using the solution for about one and a half years. 

Microsoft Authenticator is a very stable application; our only issue is that we run into the occasional bug.

The solution is highly scalable. Many organizations use it around the world. 

The technical support is very good. 

Positive

I used PingID when working for another organization, which is slightly different from Microsoft Authenticator.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but the solution is straightforward to use once installed. 

The solution requires a little maintenance, as we sometimes encounter bugs where the app doesn't recognize a user account, for example.

I am not involved in the pricing or licensing, so I can't speak to that. 

I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10.

I would advise potential users to familiarize themselves with the basics of the solution; how to set up an account, how to use the app etc. It's always a good idea to have a clear reason for using a particular solution, how it functions, and what role it fulfills.

The most valuable features are

• authentication
• authorization
• two-factor authentication
• I have never had a failure.

It's multi-tenant, residing in multiple locations. Authentication happens quickly. Irrespective of whether I'm in Australia, the US, India, or Africa, I don't see any latency. Those are the good features that I rely on.

It also has a variable extension, which is an added value because in Active Directory, if you have to do a schema, you have to make changes on multiple Active Directory instances. But here, as the extension attribute can be done from the application level, it helps you provide the provisioning. 

Another good reason for using Azure AD is that it can connect with other SaaS services. It also has SSOs, which, along with the MFA, makes authentication much easier.

One area where it can improve is connectivity with other systems. Not all systems are connected and you have to do coding to establish a point of connectivity. It supports certain vendors and it supports certain protocols. It is limited in many other aspects at the attribute level.

Also, some of the provisioning filters are not capable enough. You cannot do a date filter on the provisioning.

Perhaps they could also have easy protocols to create the accounts. Instead of just a file upload, they should have an easy connector to do the provisioning part.

I work in a service-based company and I've been using Azure Active Directory for my customers for around 10 years now.

From 2020 to 2022, there have not been more than two or three outages, and none was more than three to four hours long. And those outages may not have occurred the whole time in the entire environment, they may only have been in certain places.

When there is an outage, the end-user experience is affected, but that happens in AWS and in Azure. It happens with any SaaS product. Overall, it has not affected the end-user experience, but when there is an outage in Azure, it will have an impact on our environment.

It's scalable, but if you need more than one region, you have to pay for it. You have to think about how you want the service to be available.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy and straightforward. Setting up Azure AD doesn't require you to do anything. You buy the product from Microsoft and Microsoft sets it up for you. You just establish the connectivity to it. It does not take more than a week or two to complete the setup.

The number of employees you require for deployment and maintenance of the solution depends on how you have set up your provisioning platform. If it is automated, you can have one resource. If you're still in manual, then it depends on the volume of the workload.

Licenses are based on the usage. There is no cap. It's based on the number of users we provision.

A SaaS solution is the best product. You get it at a better price and you have many Windows-based services that are included for free.

I would definitely recommend using Azure AD. Many companies are moving from other vendors to Azure because every company uses Office 365 anyway for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. As soon as you use that, by default, you get an Azure AD account. If you have an Azure AD account, you definitely have features to use. Why would you want to go for another product?

Overall, I haven't seen any major issues with the product.

We use the Authenticator app on our mobile phones and to authenticate for Office 365. We also provide consulting services and recommend Microsoft Authenticator to clients looking for an MFA solution.

The solution improved our and our clients' security; end users are more confident knowing that their information is confidential. Strategic users, VIPs, and admins are protected from potential attacks because their authentication goes through Microsoft Authenticator.

The product has significantly increased our security maturity and gives us comfort knowing we have security in a good, affordable solution.

We have a history of all our authentications and excellent integration with the Microsoft solutions we use at our company. It runs smoothly in Windows and macOS.

I want to see more features to improve security, such as integrated user behavior analysis.

We have been using the solution for two years. 

The tool is stable, we haven't had any issues regarding stability. 

Scaling is easy as the product is hosted in the cloud; it's a robust and trustworthy solution.

Currently, we have 100 end users in our company, and we have some clients with around 1000 end users of Microsoft Authenticator.

We never needed to contact technical support as we have never had any problems, so I can't comment on that.

We previously used JumpCloud before migrating to Microsoft Authenticator, and we did that because it's more affordable and has better integration with Office 365 and the other Microsoft products we implement.

The setup was straightforward. We made an implementation plan and transitioned from using MFA via email and SMS messages to using Microsoft Authenticator.

Our security team is responsible for all our security solutions, and they take care of the maintenance, which I understand to be relatively light.

We have a Security Operation Center in our company. Another company using the same solution without a team like ours may require several hours a month to manage the solution.

We implemented it in-house since we are a consulting services company.

We think the solution is excellent and provides a return on our investment.

I would advise implementing the solution to VIPs and admins; it's affordable, effective, and efficient. I would say training staff on properly using the tool is also essential.

We decided to go straight for the Microsoft offering since we use Office 365.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

When we deployed Microsoft Authenticator for our clients, we initially had some requests for training. We delivered the training, and the end users could adapt to it; the transition was smooth.

The solution is extensively used within our organization.