Why Entra ID Protection Matters
Introduction
Microsoft Entra ID serves as the gateway to many critical applications, from Office 365 to Salesforce, enabling seamless access with a single credential. Given its central role in managing access, protecting Entra ID is crucial to safeguarding data, meeting compliance, and ensuring business continuity.
What is Microsoft Entra?
Microsoft Entra is Microsoft's new suite of identity and access management (IAM) solutions, which aims to enhance security, streamline identity governance, and improve compliance across an organization’s infrastructure. This suite includes Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory), which focuses on secure and seamless access to resources for users, and other tools like Entra Permissions Management and Verified ID, which help manage permissions and verify user identities.
The platform is designed to address the evolving needs of cloud-based environments, allowing organizations to enforce zero-trust principles, safeguard sensitive data, and maintain robust identity protection.
Active Directory (AD) is an on-premises directory service managing users, devices, and permissions within a local network, primarily for Windows devices. Using protocols like LDAP and Kerberos, it controls access to resources like file servers and printers but lacks native cloud integration.
Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) is a comprehensive cloud-based identity and access management service that goes beyond traditional AD capabilities. It not only secures access to cloud resources with SSO, MFA, and conditional access but also supports advanced identity features like Identity Protection, adaptive access policies, and integration with modern authentication protocols like OAuth and OpenID Connect.
Designed for hybrid and cloud environments, Entra ID manages identities across diverse platforms and devices, enabling organizations to secure and manage access in today’s mobile and distributed world.
What Changed with Entra ID?
Expanded Scope: Entra ID is part of the broader Microsoft Entra family, which includes:
Microsoft Entra ID Protection – Advanced security for identity threats.
Microsoft Entra Permissions Management – Controls access to cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft Entra Verified ID – Decentralized identity verification.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection dashboard - Risk detection type to MITRE attack type mapping
Why Entra ID Is More Complicated and More Important
Complex Requirements of Cloud Security: Entra ID is built to handle diverse access points, complex authentication methods, and evolving security threats across distributed environments, which requires a more advanced and multi-layered setup.
Broader Identity and Access Needs: Entra ID is designed for an environment where users access resources from various devices, locations, and applications, necessitating complex identity management, dynamic access controls, and conditional policies.
Enhanced Security Protocols: Entra ID needs to support and manage modern, internet-based protocols, secure user experiences across devices, and allow integration with countless third-party applications and services.
Advanced Compliance and Governance Requirements: Modern regulations demand real-time auditing, secure cloud access, and stringent compliance for data protection, which Entra ID addresses with advanced compliance management, auditing, and continuous monitoring features.
NOTE: Entra ID’s complexity and importance stem from its capabilities in securing cloud-based environments, managing diverse applications, and handling the intricacies of modern identity management. This makes it a critical component for any organization adopting cloud-first strategies.
Recovery Challenges
Soft-deleted items: Most deleted users, applications, and groups go to a recycle bin for 30 days. However, changes to Entra ID resources can go unnoticed, making recovery after 30 days difficult.
Permanent deletion: Items in Entra ID can be permanently deleted and recycle bins wiped out, leaving you with no recovery. If your Entra ID resources are compromised, an attacker can permanently delete resources, leaving you with no way to recover.
Accidental hard delete: Accidentally issuing a hard delete on objects bypasses the recycle bin, leaving you with no way of recovery.
Configuration complexity: Complex configurations increase management and change complexity. Changes without a way to recover can disable access for your entire business.
How do you recover from user mistakes or malicious changes/deletions? What happens when an Admin erroneously deletes a Group and now users can’t access an important application like M365? User activity tracking could be critical for your organization in a cyber event or litigation. Long term protection of that information on lower tier storage can become a critical need.
Factors that influence recovery difficulty
Type of object: Some objects are soft-deleted while others are hard-deleted.
Time since deletion: The 30-day recycle bin is a critical window.
The Microsoft Entra ID Recycle Bin is not a reliable backup solution due to its 30-day retention limit, inability to restore specific attributes or security settings, and lack of protection against misconfigurations, privilege escalations, and malicious attacks. It does not back up security policies, Conditional Access rules, or role assignments, making recovery from cyber incidents or insider threats difficult. Additionally, it fails to meet compliance requirements for long-term data protection. A dedicated backup solution like Veeam ensures granular recovery, extended retention, and full protection against accidental deletions, cyberattacks, and configuration changes, providing true resilience beyond the Recycle Bin.
Availability of backups: Having recent backups of your Entra ID configuration is crucial for complex recovery scenarios.
Complexity of your Entra ID setup: The more complex your configuration, the harder it will be to rebuild.
Why Protect Entra ID with Veeam?
User Guide for Microsoft Entra ID
Questions...
"Are you able to back up and restore all the necessary Entra ID objects and attributes?"
"Do your compliance requirements mandate storing Entra ID backups in specific locations?"
"What is your acceptable level of data loss, and how stringent is your required RPO?"
"Can you retain backups after canceling a subscription, and what would the associated costs be?"
Data Loss Prevention with Reliable Backup and Recovery
Accidental deletions, hardware failures, or attacks can lead to data loss. Veeam Backup for Microsoft Entra ID ensures that your Entra ID data, including users, groups, and configurations, is securely backed up and quickly recoverable, minimizing disruptions to productivity and customer satisfaction.
Enhanced Security and Unauthorized Access Prevention
With Entra ID as a gateway to sensitive resources, Veeam’s protection ensures that you can restore data if a breach or unauthorized change occurs. Veeam’s secure backup and granular recovery options enable you to protect data integrity and respond quickly to any security incidents.
Meeting Compliance Standards with Veeam
Veeam supports long-term retention, helping you store critical Entra ID data to meet industry regulations. With flexible retention policies and audit-ready backups, Veeam simplifies compliance, ensuring that your organization can provide documentation and reporting when needed.
Minimize Downtime and Speed Recovery
In an outage, Veeam allows you to quickly restore Entra ID data, reducing downtime and ensuring business continuity. Veeam’s efficient, automated recovery processes mean your organization can be back up and running fast, keeping services available and maintaining user access to critical applications.
Boost User Experience and Productivity
A protected Entra ID means reliable access to applications, avoiding disruptions for end users. With Veeam, you can confidently manage Entra ID without worrying about accidental or malicious deletions impacting user experience, which ensures continued productivity and seamless collaboration.
How Veeam’s Backup for Microsoft Entra ID Delivers Key Benefits
Extended Retention Beyond the 30-Day Window: Veeam’s backup solutions extend protection well beyond Entra ID’s default 30-day recycle bin, ensuring that deleted or changed items can be restored when needed.
Configuration Backup and Documentation: Veeam’s tools also protect your Entra ID configuration, allowing you to restore not only data but also the structural integrity of your Entra ID environment.
Cost-Effective Data Storage and Retention: Veeam provides efficient storage for audit logs, user activity, and configuration information, making it a practical solution for long-term retention.
Best Practices with Veeam for Entra ID Protection
Go Beyond Built-in Tools: Microsoft’s built-in tools are helpful but limited. Veeam’s solutions deliver comprehensive protection, going beyond the recycle bin for thorough data resilience.
Document Configurations and Enable Granular Recovery: Veeam enables granular recovery of Entra ID data, providing a practical way to protect complex setups. Documentation ensures your team can quickly rebuild if necessary.
Establish a Recovery Plan with Veeam Automation: Veeam’s automation streamlines Entra ID backups, so you have a reliable, consistent backup strategy ready to support rapid recovery.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Entra ID is a solution developed for protection and disaster recovery tasks for Microsoft Entra ID. With Veeam Backup for Microsoft Entra ID, you can perform the following operations:
Create backups of Microsoft Entra ID tenants and store them in PostgreSQL databases.
Create backups of Microsoft Entra ID audit and sign-in logs and store them in backup repositories.
Restore users, groups, administrative units, roles, applications and service principals from Microsoft Entra ID tenant backups to the Microsoft Entra ID environment.
Restore properties of users, groups, administrative units, roles, applications and service principals from Microsoft Entra ID tenant backups to the Microsoft Entra ID environment.
Restore audit and sign-in logs from Microsoft Entra ID log backups to the Microsoft Entra ID environment.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/entraid/entra_id_architecture.html
NOTE: As of January 27, 2025, Microsoft has implemented a policy affecting unlicensed OneDrive user accounts. Any OneDrive accounts that remain unlicensed for more than 93 days will become inaccessible to both administrators and end users. These accounts will be automatically archived, remaining visible through administrative tools but inaccessible until appropriate actions are taken. This change aims to enhance security, compliance, and storage management within organizations. Notably, education tenants are exempt from this policy.
Conclusion
Entra ID is high-value target for cyberattacks!
Protecting Entra ID with a dedicated solution like Veeam is essential to address the challenges of data security, compliance, and operational continuity.
The Top 10 Identity Threats and the Critical Role of Entra ID Backups
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Entra ID: Identification + Restoration = Business Resilience
Lessons from "How Hackers Persist & Privesc in Microsoft 365"
Veeam: 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Backing Up Microsoft Entra ID
ACTION: Make Entra ID protection a priority to keep your organization resilient, productive, and secure!