Entra 🆔 News #136 → This week in Microsoft Entra
Alex Simons has left the building 🫡
👋 Hi, Merill and Joshua here with this week’s roundup of the latest news on Microsoft Entra from around the globe 🌍.
The End of an Era: Alex Simons is Retiring
The biggest news this week is that Alex Simons, who has led the Entra product team for years, announced his retirement from Microsoft.
It’s hard to overstate Alex’s impact. While many have contributed to the org over the years, if there is one person who truly shaped and molded Entra into what it is today, it’s him. From fostering the unique culture of the Identity team to serving as the primary face of the brand, Alex is one of those rare “unicorns” who did it all. His passion for the product and the customer never wavered. Even in his final month, I saw him personally reviewing docs and proposals for the standards specs we are contributing toward Agentic AI.
I’ve even heard that my own team, the Microsoft Identity Customer Experience Engineering (CxE) org, was something he personally championed to create.
To give you an idea of his “customer-obsessed” mindset: back in 2017, long before I joined Microsoft, I started following Alex on Twitter. Out of the blue, he sent me a DM offering to help if I ever ran into trouble with Azure AD. That wasn’t an anomaly; it was the culture he built. While we’re sad to see him go, please join us in wishing him incredible fun and success in his “second career” as a volleyball coach! 🏐
A Piece of Entra Lore
Fun fact: Did you know there is a tweet memorializing the actual birth of Azure Active Directory (now Entra ID) by Alex himself? I can’t believe it’s now February 2026, 13 years later, and that historic post only has one like!
Let’s change that. Go smash the like button on it and become a part of Entra ID history!
This Week on Entra Chat
We tried something a little different this week. Ewelina Paczkowska and Daniel Bradley joined me to count down the top five Entra stories of the month, including some critical changes admins need to prep for right now.
I’m planning to do this monthly wrap-up moving forward. Watch the episode and let me know what you think!
Enjoy!
Sponsored by:
Hybrid User Onboarding: One CmdLet – Two Parameters
Fact: Hybrid user onboarding across AD, Entra ID, and Exchange Online is time-consuming and error-prone.
EasyEntra’s new Invoke-EECreateHybridUserFromTemplate CmdLet changes that:
🚀 One command creates a fully provisioned hybrid user in ~30 secs.
🚀 Just two parameters: DisplayName and TemplateName.
🚀 Templates are defined from existing users with an intuitive UI in seconds.
🚀 Schedule onboarding in advance or bulk-create users with a one-liner.
🚀 EasyEntra is free for tenants with fewer than 25 licensed users.No more context switching between consoles. No more provisioning drift between new hires.
Just fast, consistent, automated onboarding from a single command.“This product has been a miracle for our Helpdesk.”
Manager of IT Customer Support, Junior Achievement, United States
⚡️ Microsoft
🔥 Public Preview
Learn about bring your own device (BYOD) with the Global Secure Access clients for Microsoft Entra Private Access and Microsoft Entra Internet Access • Microsoft Learn
📺 Watch
Microsoft Entra Agent ID explained (10 min) • Leandro Iwase
From the community…
🚀 Most popular posts from last week
🥇Entra – You can now disable registered applications (preview) • Benoit Hamet
🥈Microsoft Disables NTLM by Default in Upcoming Windows Releases • Lokesh
🥉Entra Connect Sync 2.6.1 released - Icewolf Blog • Andres Bohren
Sponsored by:
Live Entra Webinar: Application Security Roadmap
[ Feb 25, 2026 | 1 PM ET ] Most organizations know they have application risk in Entra ID. Far fewer know where to start, what to prioritize, or how to operationalize governance without slowing the business. In this expert-led session we’ll lay out a practical, phased roadmap for securing applications in Entra ID. You’ll learn:
How to inventory and classify applications by risk, access, and business impact
How to apply least privilege and lifecycle ownership to apps at scale
A realistic roadmap for reducing app attack surface without breaking integrations
This webinar is designed for teams who are past awareness and ready for execution. Join us to build a roadmap toward continuous control in Entra. All registrants will receive the recording.
☀️ Learn
👩✈️ AI & Copilot
AI Agent Architecture & Security: Deep Dive • Seyfallah Tagrerout
⛑️ ID Protection
🧩 Manually set an Entra user as Risky via Microsoft Graph • Tom Aafloen
👮♂️ ID Governance
How to use access packages to manage group memberships • Lukas Beran
🛠️ Free Entra ID PIM Assessment Tool • Kaido Järvemets
🛠️ PIMfox for Entra – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox • Michel de Rooij
🌐 Private Access & Internet Access (GSA)
Entra Private Access and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) • Richard M. Hicks
Microsoft Entra Private Access BYOD: Access Internal Resources with Entra Registered Devices • Oliver Müller
Prompt Injection is the New Phishing…. Here’s how GSA Can Help • Dustin Gullett
📺 Episode 35 - “Entra Global Secure Access - Internet Access”, a secure identity-driven Web Gateway. (28 min) • Matthew Levy, Dinant Paardenkooper
📦 Apps
🧩 Deactivating an Entra ID Application • Tony Redmond
🧩 How to Find and Remove Application Owners from Disabled Applications • Daniel Bradley
Securing Aspire Apps with Microsoft Entra ID • Jean-Marc Prieur
Authentication
🧩 How to find unattested device-bound passkeys in Entra ID • Jan Bakker
📺 Authentication Contexts in Microsoft 365 – Explained Simply (10 min) • Jonathan Edwards
📺 Everything Azure Admins Know About Azure Auth Just Changed (7 min) • Azure Academy
📺 Passkeys in Entra: Passwords Are Dead — Here’s How to Enable Them Today (9 min) • Peter Rising
🤖 DevOps & PowerShell
Using Dev Proxy to Identify Excessive Microsoft Graph Permissions in Your PowerShell Scripts • Brad Wyatt
🚦 Conditional Access
Blocking Tor/Botnet/Anonymous Proxy access to M365 • Frank van Zandwijk
🛠️ Conditional Access Framework (2026.2.1) • Joey Verlinden
📺 Conditional Access Documenter • Brian Veldman
🖥️ Devices
How to enable Platform SSO (PSSO) for Apple macOS using Intune • James Vincent
🏙️ External ID - Guests & Multi-Tenant Organizations
B2B Guest: Stop Losing External Users To Blank Planner • Flavio Meyer
Using Google Workspace and Gmail as External Identities in Windows 365 • Dieter Kempeneers
🥷 Security
Securing Entra ID Administration: Tier 0 • Sean Metcalf
Phishing Persistence: 10 Steps to Securing a Compromised M365 Account • Andy Lombardo
I wrote a 4-part guide on building an on-prem PKI with PowerShell • Michael Waterman
🛠️ Zero Trust Assessment Tool • Moe Kinani
🛠️ Getting Started with the BlackCat - A PowerShell Module that consolidates the techniques a red team or security auditor needs into a single, well-documented module • Rogier Dijkman
📒 Tenant Configuration
Being careful with the ability to configure the preferred Entra tenant domain name • Peter van der Woude
🧩 Unified Tenant Configuration Management (UTCM) APIs in Microsoft Graph • Brian Veldman
🛠️ Solving tenant configuration drift with UTCM - Introducing TenantBaseline • Ugur Koc
🛍️ External ID - Customers
Using the ROPC flow with Azure AD B2C • Rory Braybrook
🔥 Maester
Introducing Maester 2.0 🚀 • Maester Core Team
Maester and UTCM Are Complementary Tools for Microsoft 365 Tenant Management • Tony Redmond
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