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Microsoft Security

Microsoft Entra External ID

Personalize and help secure access to any application for customers and partners.

The future of external identities

Build more secure, flexible, and people-centric authentication experiences in customer and partner applications.

Establish more secure digital relationships

Help protect customer and partner identities with strong authentication and granular access policies. Maintain trust by protecting sensitive customer data.

Control access rights for any external user

Define the right level of access, govern identity lifecycles, and establish effective access controls for customers and partners.

Create people-centric experiences

Design easy, intuitive sign-up and sign-in experiences for your customers and partners.

Accelerate development of secure applications

Make it easy for your app development teams to embed identity security to any application or any customer experience.

Preview next-generation customer identity and access management

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for Customers, part of Microsoft Entra External ID, is now in preview. Try the preview to experience the new developer-friendly platform for secure, reliable, customized authentication experiences for your web and mobile applications.

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Secure and manage all external identities

Deploy current-generation solutions for external identity management that help your organization secure and manage customer and partner identities.

  • For customers

    Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2C is a high-scale and powerful platform to configure sign-up, sign-in, and profile management for customer-facing applications. Azure AD B2C is generally available today.

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    Protect all identities with strong authentication

    Enforce conditional access policies and multifactor authentication to prevent risky access and safeguard user credentials.

    Design customized user experiences

    Customize configurations, components, and branding to fit your specific requirements. Enhance application functionality and brand recognition.

    Develop on a reliable identity platform

    Gain scalability and performance with reliable access and authentication response times regardless of traffic demand.

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    Utilize developer resources

    Developer tools and samples make it easy to integrate identity workflows into your apps and services.

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  • For partners

    Collaborate safely with all external partners through controlled access to resources. This feature is included in any Azure AD subscription.

    Enable B2B collaboration

    Share your company’s apps and services more securely with guest users from any other organization, while maintaining control over your own corporate data.

    Collaborate using preferred identities

    Sign into apps and services with their own corporate, school, or social identities without creating new identities.

    Customize the onboarding experience

    Reduce time for external users to start using organization's resources by customizing the user interface to match the company’s look and feel.

    Deliver self-service sign-up flows

    Encourage users to create their own accounts and access resources quickly and easily without requiring a manual onboarding process.

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More from the Microsoft Entra family of products

Unify your multicloud identity and access solutions to secure access for a connected world.

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)

Help protect your organization with an identity and access management solution that connects people to their apps, devices, and data.

Microsoft Entra Permissions Management

Detect, remediate, and monitor unused and excessive permissions. Enable Zero Trust security with least-privilege access across multicloud infrastructure.

Microsoft Entra Identity Governance

Simplify operations, meet regulatory requirements, and consolidate multiple- point solutions with a complete solution across on-premises and cloud-based user directories.

Microsoft Entra Workload Identities

Manage and help secure identities for digital workloads such as apps and services. Control access to cloud resources with risk-based policies and enforcement of least-privilege access.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Create, issue, and verify privacy-respecting decentralized identity credentials with an identity verification solution that helps you enable more secure interactions with anyone or anything.

Documentation and support for Microsoft Entra External ID

Developer experience

The new Developer Center

Microsoft Entra External ID supports a revamped and dedicated developer community with documentation, code samples for download, and other resources.

Documentation

Microsoft Entra External ID documentation

Microsoft Entra External ID is a platform that enables organizations to secure and manage any external user, including customers and partners.

Blog

Microsoft Entra Identity Developer Blog

Explore identity topics including application development, management, and case studies on maximizing the Microsoft identity platform.

Frequently asked questions

  • Microsoft Entra External ID is a next-generation customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution for managing all external identities. These include customers, citizens, patients, partners, suppliers, and contractors within a single, unified platform. 

    This preview represents our developer-friendly platform that supports customer scenarios within an Azure AD experience. Our unified platform utilizes familiar development tools such as Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) and familiar governance and authorization tools to simplify and strengthen customer applications.

    We encourage developers to share feedback with our product team to shape the new customer solution prior to general availability in early 2024.

    Our current partner solution, offered through Azure AD as B2B Collaboration, remains generally available and can be used at its full scope today. B2B Collaboration is located on the Microsoft Entra admin portal within the Workforce tenet. Try the preview

  • Azure AD B2C is our current generation customer identity and access management product. Azure AD B2C will continue to remain a fully supported customer solution. There are no requirements for customers to migrate at this time and no plans to discontinue our current B2C product. Microsoft is committed to continued investment in the Azure AD B2C product.

    We encourage you to try out the next-generation platform, Microsoft Entra External ID, and give us your feedback while sharing your priorities. Get started with Azure AD B2C

  • B2B Collaboration remains generally available today. It lives in the same location on the Microsoft Entra admin portal within the Workforce tenet. Get started with Azure AD

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