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Independent podcast

Entra.Chat

A weekly show for Microsoft Entra administrators, with deployment stories from practitioners and the engineers who build the product. Hosted by a Microsoft employee.

Host
Merill Fernando
Publisher
Independent (entra.news) · Independent
Pillar
Workforce Identity
Level
Practitioner
Format
Interview
Cadence
Weekly, 35 to 60 min
Status
Active, last episode 2026-09-17
Since
2025
Episodes
78
Disclosure. The host, Merill Fernando, works at Microsoft. The show states its opinions are his own, not Microsoft's, but it covers Microsoft Entra exclusively and often features Microsoft Entra team members.

What it is

Entra.Chat is a weekly podcast from Merill Fernando, published through his entra.news newsletter since March 2025. Each episode pairs an Entra practitioner or Microsoft Entra team member with a specific operational topic: passkey rollouts, dynamic group changes, conditional access, and Active Directory testing with the open-source Maester tool.

Who it suits

Administrators and architects running Microsoft Entra ID or hybrid Active Directory. If your estate is not Microsoft-centred, most episodes will be of limited use.

Editor note

It is the most practical Microsoft identity show available, and it moves fast on change notices and research: the August 2026 episodes on General Motors' 200,000-user passkey rollout and on the Pass-the-Passkey research from Black Hat are both on our passkeys learning path. The trade-off is scope and vantage point. The host works at Microsoft, so expect Microsoft's framing of Microsoft's products.

Where to start

  1. Shadow Admins: The Non-Human Identities Hiding in Your Entra Tenant
    2026-06-20 · 69 min · Practitioner · Non-human and AI agent identity

    How service principals, app registrations, and agent identities become hidden admins, which API permissions to hunt for, and why to replace secrets with managed identities.

  2. How General Motors Moved 200,000 People to Passkeys
    2026-08-31 · 44 min · Practitioner · Passkeys and FIDO

    How a large enterprise moved a mixed workforce of office, factory, call center and guest users to passkeys without locking people out.

  3. Entra & Azure Power-Up: Secure Service Principal Impersonation with Simon Gottschlag
    2025-05-10 · 38 min · Practitioner · Privileged access management

    How a prototype uses Azure Functions, Key Vault, and Entra ABAC so developers can impersonate service principals under four-eyes approval and least privilege.

Also in our learning paths

  1. Pass-the-Passkey: What Michael Grafnetter's Black Hat Research Means for Entra Admins
    2026-08-17 · 36 min · Architect · Passkeys and FIDO

    How passkey phishing resistance depends on browser origin binding, and how the Pass-the-Passkey attacks replayed assertions outside the browser.

  2. One Compromised Agent ID Blueprint Can Cross Tenant Boundaries
    2026-07-12 · 54 min · Architect · Non-human and AI agent identity

    How Entra Agent ID blueprints, agent identities, and agent users relate, and how stolen blueprint credentials could reach agent identities in other tenants.

  3. Pushing Microsoft Entra to its Limits to Secure On-Prem AD
    2025-06-20 · 48 min · Architect · Privileged access management

    How to design a Bastion Forest PAM setup for on-prem Active Directory using Entra PIM for Groups, group write-back, phish-resistant credentials, and privileged access workstations.

Last verified 2026-09-30 against the show's feed, recent episode notes, and the publisher's own pages. Status and last-episode date update weekly from the feed.

Last reviewed By SWI Community TeamSuggest a correctionHow we research

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