From SMS MFA to Passkeys: A Practical Microsoft Entra Migration Plan

Entra.Chat

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From SMS MFA to Passkeys: A Practical Microsoft Entra Migration Plan

Merill Fernando

Aug 10, 2026

Microsoft-managed SMS and voice MFA will stop working on February 1, 2027. That deadline makes passkey planning urgent, but enabling a new authentication method is only the first milestone.

In this episode of Entra.Chat, Merill speaks with Jai Maharaj, Product Manager at Microsoft, about the practical journey from legacy MFA to a passwordless Microsoft Entra environment. Jai explains what is actually being retired, why organizations can still use a customer-managed telecom provider, and how passkey profiles support synced and device-bound passkeys for different user personas.

The user-experience case is compelling: Microsoft reports roughly 69 seconds for password plus traditional MFA compared with about three seconds for a synced passkey. The security case is stronger still. Passkeys resist phishing by design, but Jai stresses that deploying them does not make an organization phishing-resistant until it enforces the right authentication strength and addresses the passwords and legacy applications still in the environment.

The conversation then follows the complete identity lifecycle. How do you ensure the right person receives a passkey during onboarding? How do you verify someone requesting a sensitive role? How do you recover an account without relying on knowledge-based help-desk questions? Jai connects those scenarios to Microsoft Entra Verified ID, verifiable credentials, Face Check, identity verification partners, and self-service account recovery.

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About Jai Maharaj

Jai Maharaj is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft. He works with customers and engineering teams across Microsoft Entra, with experience spanning ID Governance, Verified ID, External ID, and passkeys. He helps enterprise and public-sector organizations move from legacy authentication methods to phishing-resistant authentication.