Define the organization's policy with user prerequisites and other constraints for access to an application
Implementation Effort: High – Defining and enforcing access policies involves policy design, stakeholder coordination, and integration into entitlement management and Conditional Access systems.
User Impact: Medium – Users may be subject to new access request flows, eligibility checks, and approval requirements, especially for sensitive or business-critical applications.
Overview
Defining application access policies in Microsoft Entra involves establishing prerequisite conditions, organizational constraints, and exception handling for each application. This includes setting rules for user attributes such as department, employment type, or role, which determine eligibility for access. Organizations must also document the lifecycle of access—how it's granted, how long it's retained, and under what conditions it should be removed. For example, access tied to a project might expire at project completion, while access to regulated systems may require quarterly reviews. These policies can be implemented via Entra entitlement management, supporting multi-stage approval and access expiration policies.
This activity supports the Zero Trust principle of "Verify explicitly" by ensuring access is dynamically evaluated against user properties and risk factors. It also aligns with "Use least privilege access" by preventing unnecessary or conflicting access through separation of duties constraints and role-based access assignment. For instance, a user shouldn't simultaneously hold mutually exclusive roles like "Western Sales" and "Eastern Sales." These constraints can be enforced through access package incompatibility rules in entitlement management.
This analysis also informs the Conditional Access that should be applied based on classification (business impact, regulatory requirements, etc). Exceptions, such as guest or vendor access, can be handled via custom entitlement flows with delegated approvals and limited durations.
Without these defined policies, organizations face inconsistent access enforcement, difficulty in proving compliance, and increased risk of insider threat and entitlement creep. Implementing structured policy definitions mitigates these risks by making access governance deliberate, transparent, and verifiable.