7 Best Security Add-Ons for Microsoft Entra in 2026

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Most Entra deployments reach a similar point. Conditional Access is tuned, MFA is enforced, access reviews are running, and then a set of problems turns up that the licence does not cover. A user loses every registered authentication method and the helpdesk becomes the weakest link. A privileged session needs recording for an auditor. A service account authenticating overKerberossits entirely outside Conditional Access.

None of that is a flaw in Entra. It is the edge of what an identity provider does, and Microsoft documents the handoff in several places, including one capability it retired outright and pointed customers to a partner for.

Entra’s native security surface is wide. Conditional Access and role-based access control come with P1, risk-based access and ID Protection with P2, and entitlement management, access reviews, lifecycle workflows and Privileged Identity Management with Entra ID Governance.

FIDO2 and passkeys are supported in every edition at no extra licence cost, and Entra Backup and Recovery became generally available in 2026 with daily automatic backups covering users, groups, conditional access policies, named locations, applications and service principals.

The handoffs are equally documented. The clearest is identity proofing. Entra Verified ID provides the credential platform and Face Check compares a live selfie against a photo already inside a credential, using the Azure AI Vision Face API and returning only a confidence score to the verifier.

What Face Check does not do is capture or authenticate an identity document, which is why Microsoft’s partner documentation describes these scenarios as using government ID checks delivered through identity verification and proofing services.

Entra ID Account Recovery makes the dependency explicit. It exists because self-service password reset needs at least one registered method and cannot help a user who has lost all of them, and because helpdesk-driven recovery is exposed to social engineering.

Microsoft’s documentation states that verification is performed by a third-party identity verification provider rather than by Microsoft or the helpdesk, with the user redirected out to that provider for a government ID check with liveness and facial recognition, then issued a Verified ID credential in Microsoft Authenticator and a Temporary Access Pass to re-register methods.

Three other handoffs matter. Privileged Identity Management activates roles just in time but does not vault credentials, isolate or record sessions. Conditional Access governs applications that federate to Entra, which leaves Kerberos, NTLM, LDAP, RDP, SSH, file shares and databases outside its reach. And cloud infrastructure entitlement management left the product line entirely when Microsoft retired Entra Permissions Management in late 2025, with Microsoft’s own offboarding guidance naming a third-party product as the comparable replacement.

AU10TIXis the best security add-on for Microsoft Entra because it closes the one gap Microsoft requires a partner to fill rather than merely benefits from one. Entra ID Account Recovery cannot complete a recovery without a third-party identity verification provider, and the same proofing step underpins remote onboarding and governance access packages.

AU10TIX performs that step with document forensics, facial matching and active liveness detection in a hosted session triggered through the Entra Request Service API, after which the credential is issued and stored in Microsoft Authenticator with the private keys held on the device.

Its position in Microsoft’s partner structure is the detail worth checking against alternatives. Microsoft splits Verified ID identity verification partners into two groups, and AU10TIX is in both. The smaller group is Security Store integration partners, where the offer is click-to-configure, purchasable against existing Azure commitments, and works with Entra ID Account Recovery and Entra ID Governance access packages without a custom billing contract.

The larger group integrates through REST APIs and requires a direct billing contract with the vendor. AU10TIX was named a premier identity verification issuer on the Entra platform in December 2025, and it adds Serial Fraud Monitor, which uses consortium data to detect repeat fraud attempts across platforms before onboarding begins.

Silverfortapplies MFA and access policy to resources that cannot be modified to support modern authentication, which is the category Conditional Access cannot reach. Microsoft’s own tutorial lists the targets: legacy and homegrown applications, Remote Desktop and SSH, command-line and administrative access, file shares and databases, infrastructure and industrial systems, plus AD FS and RADIUS.

The integration is the best documented in this group. A bridge connector is configured in the Silverfort console against the tenant ID, an adapter is added as an enterprise application, and a policy set to Entra ID Bridge passes the access decision to Entra for Conditional Access evaluation.

Delineacovers the capability Microsoft removed. When Entra Permissions Management was retired in late 2025, Microsoft’s offboarding documentation named Delinea’s Privilege Control for Cloud Entitlements as providing comparable functionality, including continuous discovery of entitlements for human and machine identities. That is an unusually direct handoff, and it makes Delinea the default answer for teams who lost cloud infrastructure entitlement management.

Its platform integration synchronises users, groups and roles from Entra on setup and refreshes them on a schedule, in either read-only or read/write mode. Identity Threat Protection discovers users, groups, roles, applications, managed identities, app registrations and sign-in activity, and Privilege Control for Cloud Entitlements adds Azure subscriptions, resource groups and resources with their privileges.

CyberArkaddresses what Privileged Identity Management does not. PIM activates Entra and Azure roles just in time with approval workflows, but it does not vault credentials, broker or isolate sessions, record them for audit, or manage secrets for non-Microsoft targets. CyberArk’s Privileged Access Manager, Privilege Cloud and Secure Cloud Access lines cover that ground.

Microsoft publishes a gallery application for CyberArk SAML Authentication against a PVWA endpoint, though that tutorial documents no automated user provisioning, so account lifecycle stays a separate process. CyberArk states separately that its Workforce Identity adaptive MFA can act as an Entra external authentication method.

Yubicofills a hardware gap rather than a protocol gap. Entra supports FIDO2 and passkeys natively in every edition, including Free, so the question is not whether Entra speaks the standard. It is that Microsoft does not manufacture, distribute, replace or lifecycle-manage physical authenticators, and device-bound keys remain the only workable option for shared workstations, air-gapped environments and users without a phone.

Microsoft maintains a list of FIDO2 key models eligible for attestation with Entra ID, built from the FIDO metadata service, and Yubico appears across it with the YubiKey 5 series, Security Key NFC and YubiKey Bio variants. Administrators can restrict registration to specific models by AAGUID and require attestation at enrolment.

Semperisfocuses on directory resilience, and its strongest capability is one Entra does not address at all. Active Directory Forest Recovery handles cyber-first recovery of an on-premises forest, which sits entirely outside Entra’s scope and remains relevant to any organisation still running hybrid identity. Directory Services Protector covers threat detection and response across both AD and Entra ID, and Disaster Recovery for Entra Tenant covers Entra resources.

Microsoft did narrow part of this ground in 2026, since Entra Backup and Recovery is now generally available, so the question has shifted to what its exclusions leave uncovered, which include hard-deleted objects, changes to on-premises-synced objects and dynamic group rules.

Saviyntextends governance past the Microsoft-centric scope of Entra ID Governance. Entra covers HR-driven inbound provisioning from Workday and SuccessFactors, entitlement management access packages, access reviews, lifecycle workflows and PIM. Saviynt targets fine-grained in-application entitlements, separation of duties for ERP systems, cross-platform role modelling and connector breadth across non-Microsoft applications, spanning human, non-human and AI agent identities.

It publishes its own Entra ID connector covering full and incremental import of accounts and access, provisioning and deprovisioning, password reset, service account management, and entitlement management across groups, directory roles, app roles and Teams channels.

The useful way to compare these is not by feature count, since they barely overlap. It is by which documented boundary of Entra each one sits past, and how much integration work that costs.

Not on its own. Entra Verified ID issues and validates credentials, and Face Check matches a live selfie against a photo already inside a credential. Capturing and authenticating a government ID is performed by an identity verification partner, which is why Entra ID Account Recovery requires a third-party provider to complete.

Authentication confirms that whoever is signing in holds the right credential. Identity proofing confirms that a real, unique person matches the identity being claimed, using document checks and biometrics. An attacker with a stolen phone passes authentication. Proofing is what stops them at enrolment or recovery.

P2 adds risk-based access and ID Protection, not the functions outside an identity provider’s scope. Credential vaulting, session recording, legacy protocol coverage, document proofing, physical keys and forest recovery are separate disciplines, and Microsoft retired its own cloud entitlement management product rather than developing it further.

Microsoft retired it in late 2025 and stopped selling it, with data collection discontinued at offboarding. Its offboarding documentation points customers to a third-party product as providing comparable functionality for continuous entitlement discovery, making cloud infrastructure entitlement management a partner capability for Entra customers.

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