Find Your Tenant's Hidden Flaws in Minutes
This week, I’m so excited to share the inside story of a project I’ve been working on for over a year: the new Zero Trust assessment. I’m joined by some of the key folks from the team: Tarek, who’s leading the charge; Sarah and John, who are crushing docs; and Ravi, who’s owning Intune.We unpack the wild breach that sparked it all, geek out over those Sankey charts that spotlight sneaky unmanaged devices and privileged access landmines, and tease why even “expired” app creds could be your silent killer. If you’re tired of silos between identity and endpoints, this is your wake-up call—tune in to see how to make Zero Trust practical before the next attack hits.Subscribe with your favorite podcast player or watch on YouTube 👇About Our GuestsSarah LipseySarah Lipsey has been with Microsoft for almost four years and writes about monitoring and health, ID Protection, and Security Copilot in Microsoft Entra. Sarah has worked as a technical writer and instructional designer for around 20 years, and for a university, a telecommunications firm, and a railroad. She lives in the woods with her family where she loves to knit, play video games, hike, and ski. Yes, she spends way too much time trying to close out every dot on a video game map. Still working on the Skellige map for The Witcher 3.LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-lipsey-b53b746/John FloresJohn is a Senior Content Developer at Microsoft, where he has worked for over eight years. He specializes in creating high-impact technical content for identity security within Microsoft Entra, focusing on areas like Conditional Access, MFA, ID Protection, and device identity. John also leads the documentation efforts for Zero Trust content across Microsoft 365 and Identity teams. He actively collaborates with engineers and PMs to test pre-release features and engages with customers to refine technical guidance.LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbflores/Ravi KalwaniRavi is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, based in Sydney, Australia. With over 14 years of IT experience spanning technical training, support, consulting, and program management, his focus for the past five years has been on Enterprise Client and Mobility, specifically Microsoft Configuration Manager and Intune. Ravi is also an experienced public speaker, having presented at numerous technical conferences and delivered a wide range of workshops for both internal teams and enterprise customers.LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rkalwani/Tarek DawoudTarek Dawoud is a long-time veteran at Microsoft, having been with the company for over 18 years. Tarek currently leads the architecture team within the customer engineering (CXE) organization, where he helps customers deploy Entra, gathers insights for the product group, and works to solve the hardest identity problems.LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarekdawoud/🔗 Related Links* aka.ms/zerotrust/assessment → Microsoft Learn docs page for the assessment* aka.ms/zerotrust/demo → Interactive demo of a sample assessment report* aka.ms/zerotrust/feedback → Share your feedback* aka.ms/zerotrust/issues → Logging bugs & issuesZero Trust Assessment - Five minute walkthroughZero Trust Assessment ReportSample report generated by the Zero Trust Assessment tool. Try aka.ms/zerotrust/demo for an interactive demo.📗 Chapters00:00 Intro 01:11 The Origin Story: A Customer Breach 05:59 A New Way to Write Docs 08:55 Bringing Intune into the Story 11:07 How This Compares to Secure Score 14:46 Uncovering Insights with Sankey Charts 21:55 Behind the Scenes: How a Test is Built 36:18 Why We Target Privileged Access (AI Attackers) 39:59 The Myth of “Safe” Expired Credentials 42:35 Final Thoughts: “Please Run It”Podcast Apps🎙️ Entra.Chat - https://entra.chat🎧 Apple Podcast → https://entra.chat/apple📺 YouTube → https://entra.chat/youtube📺 Spotify → https://entra.chat/spotify🎧 Overcast → https://entra.chat/overcast🎧 Pocketcast → https://entra.chat/pocketcast🎧 Others → https://entra.chat/rssMerill’s socials📺 YouTube → youtube.com/@merillx👔 LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/merill🐤 Twitter → twitter.com/merill🕺 TikTok → tiktok.com/@merillf🦋 Bluesky → bsky.app/profile/merill.net🐘 Mastodon → infosec.exchange/@merill🧵 Threads → threads.net/@merillf🤖 GitHub → github.com/merill Get full access to Entra.News - Your weekly dose of Microsoft Entra at entra.news/subscribe
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