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Zero Trust in EntraID

In todays threat landscape it's vital to adopt a newer security model that is able to take into account the complexity of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Workers are now able to work from anywhere, accessing resources all over the world, so the question remains - how do we secure this vast landscape now that our users are mobile? This is where zero trust comes in to play, instead of taking the stance that everything behind the firewall is trusted and safe, we verify explicitly and everytime. Adopt of the approach of 'assume compromise' so that each request is verified and checked.

Zero Trust with Identity​

In Entra ID, Identity is leveraged to verify who users are and the access level they hold. In the modern way of working Identity is the perfect control plane, it provides us:

  • Authentication: Who we are
  • Authorisation: What we can do
  • Auditing: What we did
  • Administration: Manage and control/self-manage.

Identity Providers​

To have Identity we must have Identity providers, these are systems that creates, manages and stores digital identities. Entra ID is an example of these.

There are some common protocols that operate at the Identity level:

OpenID Connect (OIDC) - This is based on the OAuth2 protocol using JSON-formatted tokens to relying parties via a RESTful HTTP API. OAuth2 performs authorisation.

SAML - Security Assertion Markul Language (SAML) is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorisation between an identity provider and service provider. SAML is XML based and provides security assertions, that are statements used to make access-control decisions.