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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 2026-10-09
Since
2025
Episodes
80
Website ↗Apple Podcasts ↗RSS feed ↗
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. What an ID Governance Consultant Wishes You Knew About Entra
    2026-04-25 · 47 min · Practitioner · Identity governance (IGA)

    Why governance starts with mapping HR and lifecycle processes, and why automation should anchor on immutable IDs rather than names or email addresses.

  3. Securing a Global Giant: Inside IKEA's Identity Strategy with Martin
    2025-04-11 · 55 min · Practitioner · SAML and enterprise federation

    How enterprise SAML and OIDC integrations went from months of custom work to hours, and how SCIM provisioning now pairs with federated SSO.

Also in our learning paths

  1. 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.

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

    Why passkey phishing resistance relies on the browser, and how local malware bypassed it via event log signature replay, native Windows APIs, browser hooking, and exported synced passkeys.

  3. 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.

  4. 5 Lessons from Rolling Out Passkeys to Millions of Users
    2026-05-31 · 46 min · Practitioner · Customer identity (CIAM)

    Lessons from consumer passkey rollouts at scale: motivations such as login speed and conversion, phased removal of passwords, and making account recovery phishing-resistant.

  5. How to Design Bullet-Proof Conditional Access Policies in Microsoft Entra ID
    2026-04-11 · 57 min · Practitioner · Zero trust

    Gives a design method for Conditional Access: block-by-default policies, persona-based naming, and tested break-glass accounts protected with FIDO2.

  6. How to Migrate from Legacy VPNs to Entra Private Access (Real Strategies from a Veteran)
    2026-03-14 · 43 min · Practitioner · Zero trust

    A remote access veteran explains replacing VPNs with identity-based zero trust network access, running both side by side during migration.

  7. Hacking Entra ID: Bypassing AppLocks & Creating ‘Immortal’ Users
    2025-11-08 · 52 min · Architect · Identity threats and ITDR

    Covers Entra ID attack research: backdooring service principals, restricted administrative units that create undeletable accounts, AppLock bypass, and Copilot Studio OAuth phishing.

  8. AI is Coming to Identity Governance! Meet the Entra Access Review Agent
    2025-10-18 · 68 min · Practitioner · Identity governance (IGA)

    Why access reviews suffer from rubber stamping when reviewers lack context, and how AI recommendations aim to support better review decisions.

  9. Azure AD B2C to Entra External ID: Migration Strategies You Need to Know
    2025-10-04 · 39 min · Architect · Customer identity (CIAM)

    Running and migrating CIAM at very large scale: tenants with 100M+ users, holiday sign-in peaks, and approaches for moving users without forcing password resets.

  10. Red Team Secrets: How we bypass Conditional Access (and how you can fix it)
    2025-08-29 · 58 min · Architect · Identity threats and ITDR

    A security researcher explains how Conditional Access can be bypassed through FOCI client apps, pre-consented scopes and policy exclusions, and what admins can do about it.

  11. The Zero Trust Mistakes 90% of Companies Are Making (Microsoft Insiders Reveal All)
    2025-08-02 · 54 min · Practitioner · Zero trust

    Microsoft architects walk through the Zero Trust Workshop and the rollout gaps they see most, such as device compliance policies never enforced through Conditional Access.

  12. Entra Chat → A master class with Entra's Identity Provisioning Wizard!
    2025-07-11 · 55 min · Practitioner · Identity governance (IGA)

    HR-driven provisioning as the first-mile problem of joiner-mover-leaver: connectors for Workday and SuccessFactors, API-driven inbound provisioning, and migrating off legacy IGA.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

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.

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