Entra.Chat

Xbox Security runs a gaming-specific Microsoft Entra baseline across more than 70 tenants every night.
The scale is striking: about 50 controls, dozens of independently operated game-studio tenants, and one parallel pipeline that checks whether each environment still matches Xbox’s security intent. When a Conditional Access policy moves to report-only or a required service principal loses a permission, the next run finds it.
In this episode of Entra.Chat, Merill speaks with Audrey Long, Principal Cloud Security Architect in Xbox Security at Microsoft, and Sam Erde, SecureShield Architect at Patriot Consulting and a Maester maintainer. Audrey explains how Xbox Security extended Maester with custom PowerShell, GitHub Actions, a multi-tenant service principal, federated identity credentials, dashboards, ticketing, and time-bound exceptions.
The result is more than a posture report. Findings flow into an operational lifecycle with owners and deadlines. Studios get readable reports, deep links to the affected object, and remediation guidance. Security teams can answer audit questions without interrupting all the tenant admins, while the Maester pipeline keeps read-only observability separate from remediation authority.
The conversation also covers why a Microsoft-wide baseline needs adapting for gaming acquisitions, how custom tests encode an organization’s intent, why security configuration deserves regression tests, the Investigate status Audrey’s team helped introduce, and how administrators can use AI as a first-draft assistant for PowerShell and CI/CD without outsourcing validation.
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About Audrey Long
Audrey Long is a Principal Cloud Security Architect in Xbox Security at Microsoft. She focuses on Microsoft Entra and identity security, as well as securing Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud environments across Xbox and its game studios. In this episode, she shares how her team built a gaming-specific Entra baseline and operationalized it across more than 70 tenants.
* LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aulong/
About Sam Erde
Sam Erde is part of the Maester core maintainer team, a Microsoft MVP, and a SecureShield Architect at Patriot Consulting. He focuses on Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft 365 security, and practical PowerShell tooling for defenders.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samerde/
Related Links
* Maester, installation guide, and source code (mentioned at 02:19) - Maester · installation guide · GitHub source
* Continuous monitoring with Maester and GitHub Actions (mentioned at 14:38) - https://maester.dev/docs/monitoring/github/
* Writing custom Maester tests (mentioned at 22:39) - https://maester.dev/docs/writing-tests/
* Connect-Maester permissions and read-only access (mentioned at 24:38) - https://maester.dev/docs/connect-maester/
* Zero Trust Assessment: Secure your tenant (mentioned at 25:46) - https://entra.news/p/find-your-tenants-hidden-flaws-in
* Maester’s Investigate test-result status (mentioned at 34:02) - https://maester.dev/docs/writing-tests/formatting-test-results/
* Making Security Invisible for Game Developers (mentioned at 45:52) - https://opsmatters.com/videos/making-security-invisible-game-developers
Related Entra.Chat Episodes
* How to Secure Copilot Agents, Azure DevOps & Defender (+ more) with Maester 2.1 (Full Breakdown)
* Zero Trust Assessment: Secure your tenant
* How to Design Bullet-Proof Conditional Access Policies in Microsoft Entra ID
Chapters
00:00 Intro00:42 Meet Audrey Long02:19 From 50 Controls to 70+ Tenants05:11 Making an Entra Baseline Gaming-Specific08:32 Why Custom Maester Tests Matter11:07 Governance and Nightly Automation15:27 From Findings to Remediation18:07 Reports Studios Can Actually Use22:39 Building Custom Multi-Tenant Tests28:07 Security Intent as Regression Tests30:48 Catching Drift and Producing Audit Evidence41:39 CI/CD and AI for Security Admins
Podcast Apps
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GitHub - github.com/merill


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Microsoft Entra Agent ID uses familiar application and service-principal objects under the hood, but its one-to-many hierarchy creates a different security boundary. A blueprint can be associated with many agent identities. When that blueprint belongs to a third-party provider and is trusted across customer tenants, the provider’s credential security becomes part of every customer’s risk model.
In this episode of Entra.Chat, Merill speaks with Katie Knowles, Senior Security Researcher at Datadog, about her three-part security analysis of Microsoft Entra Agent ID. Katie explains the blueprint, blueprint principal, agent identity, and agent-user relationships before walking through a cross-tenant compromise demonstration: compromised blueprint credentials, enumeration of associated agents, token requests in trusting tenants, permission inspection, and selection of a useful target identity.
That path does not automatically grant Global Administrator access. Its impact depends on what the target agent identity has been permitted to do. The important lesson is the control point: one blueprint can sit upstream of many identities, tenants, and permission sets.
Katie and Merill also discuss tenant-owned versus vendor-owned blueprints, the Agent ID Administrator role, first-party agent creation through Microsoft platforms, why production client secrets compound the blast radius, workload identity federation, separating blueprints by risk, reusing app-registration detections, and Microsoft Entra ID Protection for agents.
REGISTER: Hidden Risk of App Permissions in Entra ID
Many Microsoft Entra ID environments contain third-party and custom applications with permissions that are broader than necessary, and most organizations lack visibility into how those permissions are being used. Excessive Microsoft Graph permissions and unused access increase the risk of OAuth abuse and privilege escalation.
Join our live session on July 22 to learn how to:
* Evaluate delegated versus application permissions
* Build an effective app governance strategy
* Reduce unnecessary access without disrupting users
You’ll also see how a free AppGov Score assessment can help identify governance gaps and where unused permissions reporting fit into a least-privilege approach.
Subscribe with your favorite podcast player or watch on YouTube
About Katie Knowles
Katie Knowles is a Senior Security Researcher at Datadog focused on Azure security research, cloud identity, and securing emerging technologies.
* LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/kaknowles
* X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/_sigil
* GitHub - https://github.com/siigil
* Website - https://kknowl.es/
* Microsoft MVP profile - https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-US/MVP/profile/a3547b6a-6a4d-4aa0-840f-23b858c43c8b
Related Links
* Entra Agent ID: The blueprint blast radius (mentioned at 51:39) - https://securitylabs.datadoghq.com/articles/agent-id-blueprint-blast-radius/
* Entra Agent ID: Inside a cross-tenant agent compromise (mentioned at 51:39) - https://securitylabs.datadoghq.com/articles/agent-id-inside-agent-compromise/
* Entra Agent ID: Protect, detect, respond (mentioned at 51:39) - https://securitylabs.datadoghq.com/articles/agent-id-protect-detect-respond/
* Disable agent identities in your tenant (mentioned at 04:00 and 49:33) - https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/agent-id/disable-agent-identities
* Investigating suspicious AI workflows in Microsoft Entra Agent ID: Agent’s user account (mentioned at 05:14) - https://redcanary.com/blog/threat-detection/entra-id-ai-workflows-teams/
* Entra Agent ID from a Security Perspective (mentioned at 20:38) - https://blog.compass-security.com/2026/06/entra-agent-id-from-a-security-perspective/
* Spying On Your ISVs Credential Choices (mentioned at 38:11) - https://ericonidentity.com/2025/01/13/spying-on-your-isvs-credential-choices/
* Who Are the Robots? Uncovering AI Agents Identities (mentioned at 51:39) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMxACHKIAwY
* AzTier (mentioned at 51:39) - https://aztier.com/
* Microsoft Entra Agent ID key concepts - https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/agent-id/key-concepts
* Workload identity federation - https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/workload-id/workload-identity-federation
* ID Protection for agents - https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/id-protection/concept-risky-agents
Related Entra.Chat Episodes
* If You Manage Entra Permissions, Watch This Before Deploying Agents - https://entra.news/p/if-you-manage-entra-permissions-watch
* From Windows Core to Leading Agent ID: Vince Smith’s Microsoft Story - https://entra.news/p/from-windows-core-to-leading-agent
* Attackers Are Targeting the AI Ecosystem You Cannot See - https://entra.news/p/attackers-are-targeting-the-ai-ecosystem
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:12 Katie’s Three-Part Agent ID Research
05:40 Agent ID Objects Under the Hood
06:24 One Blueprint, Many Agent Identities
08:43 The Multitenant Trust Boundary
17:33 Cross-Tenant Compromise Walkthrough
28:29 First-Party and Third-Party Blueprints
36:56 Stop Using Client Secrets
38:40 Workload Identity Federation
46:24 Permissions and Privilege Boundaries
49:33 Detecting and Responding to Agent Abuse 51:29 What Comes Next for Agent ID
Podcast Apps
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Merill’s socials
YouTube - youtube.com/@merillx
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Twitter - twitter.com/merill
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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

AI agent security is not just about attackers using AI.
It is also about attackers targeting the agent ecosystem most organizations cannot see clearly yet: MCP servers, agent skills, packages, API keys, prompts, tools, and the identity layer underneath all of it.
In this episode, I sit down with Thomas Roccia, founder of Security Break and a former Microsoft threat researcher, to look at AI agents from the threat-intelligence side. Thomas explains why the easiest path for attackers may not be futuristic autonomous hacking. It may be the boring weak spots that already exist: malicious packages, untrusted MCP servers, hostile agent skills, leaked API keys, and AI-generated code that chooses the fastest path instead of the safest one.
For Entra admins and security teams, this is where Agent ID, non-human identity, workload identity, logging, sponsorship, and governance start to matter. Entra Agent ID gives teams a way to identify and govern agents, but identity is only one part of the picture. You still need to understand what agents can discover, what tools they can call, what context they consume, and whether you can replay what they actually did.
Thomas also breaks down his practical AI threat-intelligence work, including how teams can use agents for CTI, how adversarial prompts and context flooding change the risk model, and why defenders need to understand the attacker side of agent security before these systems become invisible production infrastructure.
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About Thomas Roccia
Thomas Roccia is a threat researcher and founder of SecurityBreak, focused on AI threat intelligence, malware analysis, and AI agent security. He previously worked in incident response, malware analysis, threat intelligence, Microsoft Defender, and AI threat research. He is also the author of Visual Threat Intelligence and teaches practical AI for threat intelligence and agentic workflows.
LinkedIn - https://au.linkedin.com/in/thomas-roccia
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Related Links
* Thomas Roccia on LinkedIn - https://au.linkedin.com/in/thomas-roccia
* SecurityBreak - https://securitybreak.io/
* Practical AI for Threat Intelligence training - https://securitybreak.io/training-genai
* SHIELD.md: A Security Standard for OpenClaw and AI Agents - https://blog.securitybreak.io/shield-md-a-security-standard-for-openclaw-and-ai-agents-b38637031460
* Microsoft Entra Agent ID - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/agent-id/what-is-microsoft-entra-agent-id
* Microsoft Entra Agent ID key concepts - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/agent-id/key-concepts
* Agentic Resource Discovery specification - https://agenticresourcediscovery.org/
* GitHub Agent Finder - https://github.blog/changelog/2026-06-17-agent-finder-for-github-copilot-now-available/
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:33 Meet Thomas Roccia
01:48 From Malware Analysis to AI Threat Intel
03:30 Why AI Security Is Moving So Fast
05:49 Agentic Resource Discovery and New Standards
09:25 Attackers Are Already Using AI Agents
11:47 The AI Ecosystem Is The Target
15:26 Prompt Injection, MCP, Skills, and API Keys
20:28 Vibe Coding vs Production Security
23:47 Agent ID and Identity for AI Agents
32:30 Practical AI for Threat Intelligence
39:13 Monitoring Agents Like Threat Actors Do
42:28 Context Flooding and What’s Next
Podcast Apps
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Merill’s socials
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Threads - threads.net/@merillf
GitHub - github.com/merill


Get full access to Entra.News - Your weekly dose of Microsoft Entra at entra.news/subscribe

Folks, every big thing in identity started as somebody’s late-night side quest and Vince Smith has been in the room for a lot of them.
In this episode of Entra Chat, Vince (the PM lead driving Microsoft Entra Agent ID) walks us back through a 25-year run at Microsoft: shipping beta products off a machine wired straight to the internet under a neighbor’s desk, owning the early RBAC and custom roles work that shaped Entra, surviving a couple of security incidents he mostly can’t talk about, and finally landing on the team building identity for AI agents.
Along the way he owns up to the one feature name he’d take back if he could, and shares the dead-simple trick he used as a junior dev to get senior engineers to answer his questions every single time.
But this isn’t just a war-stories episode. Vince breaks down why agents needed a brand-new kind of identity in the first place. An agent is a strange beast ‘as clumsy and unpredictable as a human, and as fast as a machine’ which means traditional anomaly detection looks at one and basically can’t tell if it’s a user or a workload gone rogue. His answer is the blueprint-and-instance model: one blueprint (think app registration) spinning up many scoped, least-privilege instances, instead of a bazillion app registrations or one over-permissioned service principal that can read everyone’s mailbox. And if you’re wondering why this matters now, Vince makes the case that as users move to passkeys, attackers just slide to the other end of the balloon: non-human identities and workloads. That’s the new frontier.
So what should you actually do Monday morning? His advice is refreshingly un-precious: don’t wait for the perfect plan. Start green, set a standard for every new agent so you stop the bleeding from shadow AI, then stay green and slowly get green by cleaning up the mess behind you. Even just stamping a unique identifier on your agents today buys you the observability you’ll desperately want later.
Be the river that flows around the rocks.
There’s a lot more in the full conversation including how Agent ID and Agent 365 actually fit together, and how Vince came up to speed on a space that’s moving too fast to write a book about. Give it a watch.
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About Vince Smith
Vince Smith is the PM Lead for Agent ID at Microsoft. A self-described computer nerd and Gen Xer, Vince has been with Microsoft since late 1999, working on everything from Windows Core and GDPR to multi-tenant collaboration and identity protection.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincecsmith/
🔗 Related Links
* Entra Agent ID - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/agent-id/what-is-microsoft-entra-agent-id
* Agent 365 - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-agent-365
📗 Chapters
06:23 Provisioning vs. Federation
10:25 The Need for Agent ID
17:28 Blueprints and Multi-Instancing
23:55 Demystifying Agent 365
26:56 The Threat of Non-Human Identities (NHI)
33:08 Planning Your Enterprise AI Strategy
36:14 Defining a “Start Green” AI Plan
40:45 The Best Way to Learn Complex Tech
45:13 The Wild World of CIAM
Podcast Apps
🎙️ Entra.Chat - https://entra.chat
🎧 Apple Podcast → https://entra.chat/apple
📺 YouTube → https://entra.chat/youtube
📺 Spotify → https://entra.chat/spotify
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👔 LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/merill
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🧵 Threads → threads.net/@merillf
🤖 GitHub → github.com/merill


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Not every admin in your tenant is a person. Service principals, app registrations, and the new wave of agent identities can quietly hold permissions powerful enough to own your entire environment and most orgs can’t even see them. In this episode of Entra Chat, we sits down again with Erika Zellig to expose the “shadow admins” hiding in your Entra tenant, and what to do about them.
What we get into:
* Application vs. delegated API permissions and why both can be shadow admins
* The most dangerous permissions to hunt for: Files.ReadWrite.All, Sites.FullControl.All and more.
* How Midnight Blizzard turned secrets buried in email into full tenant compromise
* Credential and secret sprawl why you should vault everything and move to managed identities
* Agent identities explained, and why a “sponsor” is safer than an “owner”
* App ownership as an attack path: lateral movement and privilege escalation
* Locking down workload identities with conditional access
* Deadlines that bite: EWS retirement and the ID CRL protocol retirement
* Managed devices, and going from Zero Trust to “hero trust” without burying your help desk
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About Erika Zelic
Erika Zelic is a well-known voice in the Microsoft security and identity community, bringing years of offensive security experience to help admins secure their cloud infrastructure.
With roots in offensive security and consulting, she now works on remediating configuration-based vulnerabilities and is known for sharing practical, no-nonsense security insights with the Entra community.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-z-b4169598/
🔗 Related Links
• MS Identity Tools - https://aka.ms/msid
📗 Chapters
* 02:05 The High Cost of DIY AI & Small Language Models
* 06:17 Why AI is Forcing Everyone to Harden Their Infrastructure
* 14:12 The Hidden Dangers of API Permissions
* 20:59 How Midnight Blizzard Exploited App Secrets
* 27:21 The Magic of Managed Identities & Azure Arc
* 33:38 The Nightmare of Multiple App Owners
* 43:32 Sneaky API Permissions You Need to Monitor
* 51:48 Crucial Protocol Retirements: EWS & ID CRL
* 55:24 Zero Trust: Why You MUST Enforce Managed Devices
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/rss
Merill’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


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