Azure AD Entitlement Management to Govern External Users

Azure AD Entitlement Management is a powerful tool for governing external users, allowing you to manage access to sensitive resources and data. With Entitlement Management, you can automate the process of granting and revoking access to external users, reducing the risk of data breaches.

By using Azure AD Entitlement Management, you can create a centralized system for managing external users, including contractors, partners, and customers. This system can be used to automate the onboarding and offboarding process for external users, ensuring that they only have access to the resources and data they need to perform their job.

Azure AD Entitlement Management also provides a way to track and audit user access, helping you to identify potential security risks and take action to mitigate them. By regularly reviewing user access and revoking unnecessary permissions, you can reduce the attack surface of your organization and improve overall security.

By implementing Azure AD Entitlement Management, you can simplify the process of managing external users and reduce the risk of data breaches, ensuring that your organization remains secure and compliant with regulatory requirements.

You can use Azure AD entitlement management to govern external users through various lab tests.

Azure AD entitlement management provides a centralized platform for managing access to your organization's resources.

To test this, you can create a new group and assign a few users to it, then grant them access to a specific resource.

This will help you understand how entitlement management works in your organization.

By testing entitlement management in a lab environment, you can ensure that it's working as expected before rolling it out to your entire organization.

You can also use this opportunity to test different scenarios, such as revoking access to a resource or updating the access permissions of a user.

This will give you a better understanding of how entitlement management can be used to govern external users.

Entitlement management is a key feature of Azure AD that allows you to control who has access to your resources and under what conditions.

By using entitlement management, you can ensure that only authorized users have access to your resources, reducing the risk of data breaches and other security threats.

Entitlement Management (EM) is a part of the Azure AD Identity Governance (AIG) that enables organizations to manage identity and access lifecycle at scale.

The EM feature is built on 5 components: Catalog, Access Package, Connected Organizations, Reports, and Settings.

Inside the Resource Directory, you can configure catalogs, such as Catalog1, which contains resources like Group1, Group2, App1, and Site2.

Access packages can be created for internal or external users, with specific resources and roles assignment already configured.

For external users, you need to choose "For users not in your directory" under the Users who can request access option.

There are three settings to choose from when creating an access package for external users: Specific connected organizations, All configured connected organizations, and All users.

The My Access portal link is required to share with external users, which can be obtained by copying the link from the External_AccessPackage configuration.

External users can request access to an access package by using the My Access portal link, which requires them to sign in as part of their connected organization.

The approver will approve or reject the request, and the request will go into the delivering state.

A guest user account will be created in your directory using the B2B invite process, and the guest user will be assigned access to all resources in the access package.

The external user will receive an email indicating that their access was delivered, and they can access the resources by selecting the link in the email or attempting to access any directory resources directly.

Access packages can have an expiration date, and when it expires, the external user's access rights will be removed.

Depending on the lifecycle of external users settings, the external user will be blocked from signing in, and their account will be removed from your directory after a defined number of days.

By default, when you create a new catalog, it's enabled to allow external users to request access packages in the catalog, but make sure Enabled for external users is set to Yes.

Access packages reside in catalogs, and you can create a catalog to group related resources and access packages and delegate their management.

You can add resources to a catalog, such as groups, teams, applications, and SharePoint sites, and then add them to access packages.

Delegation and roles in entitlement management allow you to delegate management of catalogs and access packages to specific users or groups.

Here's a summary of the Entitlement Management features:

Note: The above summary is a list of the 5 components of Entitlement Management, as mentioned earlier.

To configure and set up Azure AD entitlement management for governing external users, you need to configure your Microsoft Entra B2B external collaboration settings. This involves allowing guests to invite other guests to your directory, which can be done by setting "Guests can invite" to "No" to ensure properly governed invitations.

To create an entitlement management policy that includes all users, you must first enable email one-time passcode authentication for your directory. This is a crucial step, as it allows users to request access without being part of a connected organization.

Here are the basic steps to configure entitlement management:

To configure the basics for your Microsoft Entra setup, start by signing in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as an Identity Governance Administrator. This role is required to complete the task.

You can also use other least privilege roles such as the Catalog owner, User Administrator, and Access package manager.

Browse to Identity governance > Entitlement management > Access package. If you see an "Access denied" message, ensure that a Microsoft Entra ID P2 or Microsoft Entra ID Governance license is present in your directory.

To create a new access package, select New access package on the access package page.

On the Basics tab, enter the name External user package and description Access for external users pending approval. You can leave the Catalog drop-down list set to General.

Here are the steps to configure the basics in a concise format:

To configure requestor information, you need to select the Next button to open the Requestor information tab.

On this screen, you can ask extra questions to collect more information from your requestor. These questions are shown on their request form and can be set to required or optional.

For now, you can leave these as empty, but you can adjust them later if needed.

Here are the steps to configure requestor information in a concise list:

To ensure seamless access for external users, it's essential to review your Conditional Access policies. This involves excluding the Entitlement Management app from any policies that impact guest users to avoid blocking them from accessing MyAccess or signing in to your directory.

Make sure to exclude the Entitlement Management app from any Conditional Access policies that impact guest users. Otherwise, a Conditional Access policy could block them from accessing MyAccess or being able to sign in to your directory.

If the conditional access is blocking all cloud applications, exclude the Request Approvals Read Platform in your Conditional Access (CA) policy as well. This requires creating a custom security attribute with a suitable name and values, assigning it to the Request Approvals Read Platform, and applying a filter in your CA policy to exclude selected applications based on the custom attribute.

Conditional Access policies can be complex, so it's crucial to confirm you have the necessary roles: Conditional Access Administrator, Application Administrator, Attribute Assignment Administrator, and Attribute Definition Administrator.

To enforce guest-access package reviews, consider the following criteria:

You can enforce reviews of guest-access packages to avoid inappropriate access for guests. This can be done by setting up quarterly reviews and designating reviewers for compliance-related projects.

To reduce the burden on users, consider allowing self-review for less sensitive projects. This will help remove access from users no longer with the organization.

User Lifecycle Management is a crucial aspect of governing external users in Azure AD Entitlement Management. It involves managing the lifecycle of these users, from their initial request to their eventual removal from the directory.

You can configure lifecycle settings in Entitlement Management to manage the lifecycle of external users. This includes setting the number of days after which the user account will be removed from the directory.

In the Settings section of Identity Governance, you can find the Manage the lifecycle of external users section. Here, you can configure settings such as blocking external users from signing in to the directory and removing external users after a defined number of days.

To remove external users automatically, you can set the Remove external user setting to Yes. You can also specify the number of days before removing the external user from the directory.

The following table summarizes the options for removing external users:

You can configure these settings to suit your organization's needs, ensuring that external users are managed in a way that meets your requirements.