Inside Microsoft’s Entra Tenant: The Internal App Governance Playbook

Update: 2025-12-06

Description

Khurram, a key member of the internal App Governance assessment team at Microsoft, joins the show to pull back the curtain on how Microsoft manages application security at a massive corporate scale and the rigorous internal security measures Microsoft employs to protect its corporate Entra ID tenant from risky applications.

In this deep dive, Khurram reveals Microsoft’s custom-built App Governance blueprint. He details the process for reviewing and consenting to the hundreds of new application requests the organization receives monthly.

Key Takeaways

* Permission Risk Rating: Learn how Microsoft’s team assesses and assigns a severity rating—Low, Moderate, Important, or Critical—to permissions. This rating is based on the permission’s capability, whether it’s delegated or application, and its potential for PII exposure (e.g., Application permission or a .all scope will score higher).

* The Weighting Model: Discover how the Microsoft app assessment team has proactively risk-rated between 3,000 and 3,500 permissions. This approach dictates when an app is automatically approved (for low-risk requests like User.Read) versus when it is flagged for manual, scenario-based review.

* Holistic Risk Review: Khurram explains how the app’s overall risk is calculated beyond just permissions. This includes mandatory security controls like banning high-risk reply URLs (e.g., azurewebsites.net and aka.ms) , enforcing the use of certificates over secrets , and requiring multiple owners.

* Multi-Team Veto Power: Understand the critical approval workflow where requests for higher-risk permissions are routed to specific organizational data owners (like the DLP, Identity, or Exchange teams). All teams must approve the request as a whole, giving each team a critical veto power over access to their services.

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About Khurram Chaudhary

Khurram is a Principal Security Assurance Eng on the internal assessment team at Microsoft. He specializes in App Governance and was instrumental in developing the systems and risk-rating methodologies used to manage thousands of application requests within Microsoft’s corporate tenant.

🔗 Related Links

* Entra Application Management - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/enterprise-apps

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📗 Chapters

01:21 The Shift to Admin Consent

03:38 Factors for Reviewing App Risk

06:35 How We Rate Permission Severity

09:25 Automating Low-Risk Approvals

14:17 The Internal Review Workflow

21:40 The App Governance Scoring System

29:01 The Localhost Redirect Debate

39:35 Handling Stale Apps and Permissions

49:34 Advice for Identity Admins

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