Posts

TL;DR Maester: Review your tenant configuration using Pester (PowerShell) tests written by the community or customised by you. EntraExporter: Export tenant state to JSON files. Review changes between exports and take action. ZeroTrustAssessment: Evaluates tenant posture against Zero Trust baseline. Provides the big picture and summary of findings. Together they enable repeatable change management, drift detection, and continuous improvement. Introduction Operating Entra ID at scale requires more than ad-hoc scripting. Configuration must be observable, assessable, repeatable, and improvable. Rather than building custom verification scripts, backup solutions, or assessment frameworks from scratch, leverage three proven tools from Microsoft and the community—collectively known as the Entra ID Three Musketeers: Maester, EntraExporter, and ZeroTrustAssessment. Each addresses a critical piece of the operational lifecycle—governance testing, configuration export, and security assessment—forming a complete loop for identity platform maturity. ...

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐒𝐎 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐈𝐃? Here’s a proven architecture that combines developer self-service with strong governance: The Flow: Developers request identities via Backstage Backstage generates Terraform configs as Pull Requests Identity Operations team reviews and approves GitHub Actions provisions resources in Entra ID via Terraform Maester continuously audits all non-human identities against Entra as Code (Terraform) Compliance issues are automatically detected and reported Key Benefits: ...

TL;DR Backstage is an open-source developer portal that helps us manage software projects, tools, and APIs. With Backstage, we can create a unified view of our software ecosystem, making it easier for developers to discover and use tools. With Backstage, we can create custom plugins to integrate with our existing tools and services. My post provides an example custom template for Entra ID, which allows us to build a process to enable SSO for the applications. Introduction Based on the Identity perspective for the organisation, we are facing the challenge of managing multiple software projects, tools, and APIs. Backstage is an open-source developer portal that helps us create a unified view of our software ecosystem, making it easier for developers to discover and use tools. In this post, I will guide us through setting up Backstage and creating a custom plugin for Entra ID. ...

TL;DR Use my demo OpenID Connect provider to test workload identity federation in Entra ID. Use my Terraform module and example to create an Azure AD application with federated identity credentials. Play with workload identity federation without the need for secrets. Integrate your workloads with external identity providers like GitHub or Kubernetes. Introduction No more secrets! It is 2025, and our identity operations should be more secure and easier to manage. Microsoft Entra ID Workload Identity Federation enables you to utilise external identity providers (such as GitHub, Workload on Kubernetes cluster, SPIFFE, or SPIRE) to authenticate workloads without requiring secrets. In this post, I’ll guide you through setting up federated identity credentials in Entra ID using a custom OIDC provider and Terraform. ...

No more Custom Policies & Identity Experience Framework With the new Entra External ID and Entra ID, we can use the built-in policies for authentication. Entra External ID technical details and requirements: authentication method must be supported by the tenant; no custom authentication methods via user flow, we can select a password or OTP (one-time password) method. no custom methods like magic link or passwordless (yet!) no ADMIN API to authenticate users; no API connector to use external API for authentication; Compare User with password and OTP ...

Changelog 2025-04-09 - initial version 2025-04-11 - updated with AADInternals OSINT tool Tenant public information Your tenant-id With the page https://www.whatismytenantid.com/, you can find your TenantID How does it work? We can check the Network tab of the browser and find a query to the OpenID Configuration endpoint based on the domain: https://login.microsoftonline.com/{{YOUR-DOMAIN-HERE}}/.well-known/openid-configuration ^ We can also find a tenant location with the tenant_region_scope field. ^ Whatismytenantid doesn’t work? You can get the same from the website https://gettenantpartitionweb.azurewebsites.net/! ...

Identity Provider Story Basic assumptions: in-browser authentication, with OAuth2/OpenID Connect (but also applicable for SAML), for Web, SPA and Mobile applications. Let’s start with a story: The user enters the address ‘https://portal.my-company.com’ to check company news; without an active session in the application (cookie or token), the application will be redirected to the Identity Provider (IdP) - authentication is required. After the identity verification and authorization, an IdP session will be created and the user redirected to the application. ...

TR;DR We often use https://www.minuteinbox.com/ to test CIAM solutions with unique email addresses, but is it perfect? With our domain and OpenTrashmail, we can improve our solution. After a year or two, we can still activate the old account (reset password or OTP access) - it is not possible via 10 min mail (the domain for email is changing, and the old one is not accessible). Setting Up OpenTrashmail with Your Domain for E2E Testing Email testing is often a critical part of end-to-end (E2E) testing for applications that send notifications, verification codes, or other important communications. Running our disposable email service gives you full control over test mailboxes and simplifies your testing workflow. Here’s how to set up OpenTrashmail: ...

What is Token Enrichment? Entra External ID token enrichment is a process where additional claims, attributes, or context are added to authentication tokens (ID Token, Access Token or both) during the authentication flow. This enrichment enhances the security token with supplementary information that can be useful for authorization decisions and user context. Common examples include: Customer ID from your CRM system User ID from an external profile store Authorization context from your application Role information from Fine-Grained Authorization systems like OpenFGA The enrichment happens through a REST API call with a fixed contract defined by the Entra ID team. At the end of this post, you’ll find the complete API contract specification. ...

TL;DR I’m using AI tools to generate code for my projects. Here I want to show you GitHub Copilot, Bolt, Aider, and GitHub Copilot Workspace. I’m happy with the results from Aider with the Claude AI model, and Bolt is perfect for generating a nice starting point for my front-end projects. GitHub Copilot is ideal for small code snippets. Introduction Happy New Year! This post will be my summary and notes on how I use AI daily as a software developer, or maybe it will be better to name it proof of concept or demo developer ;) I will focus only on the tools that help me write/generate the code. ...