Identity and access management (IAM) is foundational for securing organizations. While it’s long been an important operational concept, it was largely relegated to service desk operations for creating identities and assigning group memberships.

Several years ago, Microsoft started down the route of zero trust networking, with a foundational concept being identity as one of the key security boundaries.

Identity is increasingly used as a gateway to all of an organization’s services—whether they’re on-premises, in the Microsoft 365 cloud, or hosted by third-party cloud app providers. Being able to provision, manage, secure, and restrict the flow of data based on identity, device health or compliance, and access risk factors has become the preeminent way of protecting an organization’s assets.

Throughout this book, we’ll explore a broad range of IAM concepts, ranging from identity models such as cloud and hybrid identity to risk-based access and authorization policies. You’ll discover cross-organization identity synchronization capabilities, design entitlement management strategies, and learn how to integrate third-party applications in a secure fashion—all of which will prepare you to successfully navigate the Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator exam.