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As we wrap up the end of the year, I wanted to share my gratitude for all the partners that have contributed in helping our customers rapidly enable a secure remote workforce. From securing applications to rolling out passwordless solutions or ensuring seamless collaboration across organizations, our partners have been critical in helping our customers adapt to a new way of work. 


 


We built Microsoft identity as a platform to bring together all your tools, apps, and services—whether or not we built them—to allow you to deliver better experiences for you and your employees. We now have over 3,400 applications in our Azure AD app gallery and deep partner integrations across categories.   


 


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We’ve seen amazing progress in our partner ecosystem and wanted to share 5 recent integrations with partners as we wrap 2020.


Simplifying identity management and access to your apps


As employees continue to work remotely, they need secure, seamless access to all types of applications from cloud apps to on-premises apps. That’s why we continue to partner with software providers to integrate with Azure AD to simplify and secure application access. Last month we added over 52 new federated applications and 9 new provisioning connectors in our Azure AD app gallery for you to quickly enable single sign-on and automate user provisioning.


Hashicorp Terraform SSO


One new federated application that has been recently added to our Azure AD app gallery is Terraform Cloud from Hashicorp. Terraform Cloud provides infrastructure automation-as-a-service for the open source project Terraform. Many of our customers have adopted Terraform as a mechanism to automate the provisioning of resources in their Azure environments. Terraform Cloud helps customers manage infrastructure provisioning, collaborate across teams, and provide governance and security across an organization. By integrating with Azure AD, Terraform Cloud customers can easily secure and manage organizational access to their Terraform environment. Users can get the convenience of single sign-on for Terraform Cloud, and admins can assign each user to the Terraform Cloud team with the appropriate permissions for their role in minutes. You can learn more and sign up for Terraform Cloud for free at terraform.io/cloud.



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Adobe rolls out support for SCIM-based provisioning


At Microsoft Ignite, Adobe announced a private preview of SCIM standard-based app provisioning integration for its core Adobe Identity Management platform. The updated admin experience makes it easier to manage user lifecycles across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Document Cloud, and Adobe Experience Cloud. We are excited to announce that this integration is now publicly available for all Adobe and Azure AD customers. Get started setting this up by going to the documentation here.


 

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Protect legacy applications through new secure hybrid access partnerships


To help customers secure and manage access to their legacy authentication-based apps, we continue to expand our secure hybrid access partnerships. Our secure hybrid access partnerships allow our customers to use their existing application delivery networks, VPNs and software defined perimeter solutions to secure access to legacy applications.


Pulse Secure SSO


One new solution that we recently added is Pulse Connect Secure. Pulse Connect Secure is a VPN solution that provides secure, authenticated access for remote and mobile users from any web-enabled device to corporate resources. With our integration, employees can easily sign-in to Pulse Connect Secure with their Azure AD credentials to access legacy application and admins can secure access to Pulse Connect Secure.


 

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Enabling the move to passwordless


Weak passwords are a vulnerable attack vector for bad actors, which is why we are such strong advocates of passwordless technologies. According to Forrester, passwordless technology is top security trend that customers are evaluating to ensure secure yet easy to use experiences.  To help customers adopt passwordless methods, including FIDO2 security keys, we’ve worked with hardware partners like Yubico to pilot a program to accelerate deployment of passwordless solutions through our services partners.


Yubico Passwordless Pilot Program


Services partners like System Integrators are an important catalyst to help customers accelerate their passwordless deployment. That’s why we’ve partnered with Yubico to provide services partners the ability to nominate their customers to pilot YubiKeys. Services partners can leverage our joint pilot program and receive 25 YubiKeys to deploy with customers.  Here’s what one partner, Metsys, who has participated in the pilot program and deployed YubiKeys for Groupe Bel had to say:


“The passwordless campaign run by Microsoft and Yubico is the opportunity to show our customers the benefits of the YubiKeys in the Microsoft environment: a simplified user experience for a maximum level of security”- Laurent Cayatte, President of Metsys


New FIDO2 security keys from VinCSS


We are always seeking new partnerships with FIDO2 security key vendors who enhance our ability to provide customers with passwordless authentication options. We’ve recently added VinCSS, the cybersecurity affiliate of VinGroup in Vietnam, to our list of FIDO2 security key vendors that are compatible with our passwordless experience.  With this latest addition, customers in Vietnam and Asia Pacific have another FIDO2 solution to go passwordless.


See you next year!


Look out next month for another update on how our partners are contributing to help enable a secure remote workforce and ensuring seamless access to all your apps and resources. Be sure to check out the Azure AD partner page to learn more about all the partnerships we have to help you with solving your identity needs.


 


Have a great holiday season and Happy New Year!


 


Best Regards,


Sue Bohn


Partner Director of Program Management


Microsoft Identity Division


 

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.