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Azure AD External Identities is a set of capabilities that enable organizations to secure and manage customer, partner, and vendor access to their corporate apps and services. It allows users without an Azure AD account to sign in using their own credentials or social identities such as Facebook, Google, or Microsoft.
Azure AD B2B collaboration provides secure sharing of your company resources to external partners. These users can be given access through a variety of methods, such as a direct invitation or through self-service sign-up.
Admins can invite external users to their organization using the Azure portal, PowerShell, or APIs. Invited users receive an email with a redemption link to access shared resources.
Azure AD allows external partners to sign up via user flows that admins can customize depending on the application’s requirements. With this capability, you can manage who can access what, enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA), and automate user provisioning.
Azure AD B2C is a customer identity access management solution that enables you to customize and control how customers sign up, sign in, and manage their profiles when using your applications. It differs from B2B collaboration as it focuses on app-specific user bases, typically end customers.
Identity experiences are configured through user flows or custom policies allowing full control over branding, languages, and user experiences.
With external identities, enforcing Conditional Access policies is crucial for maintaining security. These policies allow organizations to define conditions under which users are allowed access, including user risk, device compliance, IP location, and more.
For example, you might enforce a policy that requires all external partners to perform MFA when accessing certain resources or block access from specific countries.
Azure AD provides tools for governing external user access. Access Reviews is a feature allowing you to assess if users still require access to your resources. You can also automate responses or involve resource owners in the decision-making process.
Entitlement Management is another tool that automates access package assignments (which consist of resources, applications, and SharePoint sites) for external users. This tool streamlines the process of managing user lifecycles and access.
Monitoring external user activity is essential. Azure AD offers auditing and reporting features which give insights into sign-ins, changes made, and security incidents, among others.
Azure AD reporting tools can generate reports such as:
Consider a scenario wherein Company A collaborates with Partner Company B. Company A can invite specific individuals from Company B to collaborate on a project by using Azure AD B2B. An invite is sent, and upon redemption, Company B’s users can securely access resources shared by Company A, such as documents on SharePoint.
To ensure security, Company A sets Conditional Access policies that require MFA from external users accessing the project resources from outside Company A’s network. If any user’s risk profile suggests suspicious activity, access can be blocked, or they can be required to reauthenticate.
Moreover, with Access Reviews set up, Company A periodically reviews the access of Company B’s users to evaluate whether they still need access or if their permissions should be modified or revoked.
In conclusion, Azure AD offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage external identities securely and efficiently. By leveraging capabilities such as Azure AD B2B, B2C, Conditional Access, Governance, and Monitoring, organizations can extend their networks, collaborate seamlessly with external users, and maintain a strong security stance. Following these best practices can help candidates understand the key concepts of managing external identities in preparation for the AZ-500 exam.
External identities can be managed using Azure AD B2B (Business to Business), allowing organizations to provide access to external users.
Guest users have limited permissions by default, but these can be adjusted by an administrator depending on the desired level of access.
Azure AD B2C is a customer identity management service that supports integration with social identity providers like Facebook, Google, and others.
Conditional Access policies are used to secure resources, not for the automated creation of user accounts.
External identities do not require their own Azure subscription to authenticate into Azure AD; they use their own credentials or external identity providers.
Azure AD supports user provisioning from various external directories, including Google’s G Suite, through identity federation or synchronization.
Azure AD Soft delete allows the recovery of deleted guest users within a certain period after deletion.
Both Azure AD Conditional Access policies and Azure AD Identity Protection can be configured to enforce multi-factor authentication for external users.
A user can be part of multiple Azure AD tenants as a guest, with different roles and permissions in each tenant.
Azure AD B2B is designed to manage external identities, providing secure access for partners and suppliers, including single sign-on capabilities.
Azure AD B2C requires an Azure AD tenant, as it’s a feature of Azure Active Directory used for managing customer identities.
External identities in Azure AD are identities that represent users who are not members of the organization’s directory, such as customers, partners, or vendors.
Some of the user properties that can be managed for external identities in Azure AD include display name, user name, email address, password, country/region, job title, and department.
To invite an external user to an Azure AD tenant, you can create a guest user account and send an invitation email that includes a redemption link.
The redemption experience for external identities in Azure AD is the process by which an external user redeems their invitation and sets up their account in the Azure AD tenant.
The first step in the redemption experience for external identities in Azure AD is the invitation email, which includes a redemption link.
During the redemption experience for external identities in Azure AD, the external user needs to provide their first and last name, choose a user name, verify their identity by providing their email address and phone number, and set up their credentials by choosing a password or using multi-factor authentication.
You can manage external user properties in Azure AD by going to the user’s settings and updating their display name, user name, email address, and other attributes.
You can configure external user access in Azure AD by assigning roles and permissions, and configuring policies such as multi-factor authentication.
You can manage external user groups in Azure AD by adding or removing external users from groups by going to the group’s settings in the Azure portal.
Common use cases for managing external identities in Azure AD include providing access to resources and applications for customers, partners, and vendors, simplifying access management, and ensuring compliance with security and privacy regulations.
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