The Modern Workforce and Identity Security with Microsoft Azure AD + ServiceNow

[Ari Schorr]

This blog post by Ari Schorr, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Identity Engineering Strategic Alliances

Our Microsoft Identity team spends a lot of time looking at how our customers leverage our platform and connect to their business-critical applications. That’s why it was no surprise when ServiceNow has told us that Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) protects more ServiceNow users than any other identity provider. In fact, our data shows ServiceNow ranked as Microsoft’s "most valuable" Azure AD connected app based on number of customer “tenants” and active usage, which is the most of ANY app at over 3 million unique monthly active users! 

 

What do we hear from this large number of joint customers?

We hear a lot about what is top-of-mind for identity and security in the new normal.

Here are some of their top challenges: 

1. Explosion of apps, devices, and users across and outside of the corporate network. As the organizational barriers blur between who is in your network and out of it, organizations struggle to manage identities for not only their employees but external partners, suppliers and distributors, and even end-consumers, customers or citizens.
2. Identity attacks continue to increase. There was a 300% increase in identity-related attacks last year and 81% of breaches caused by credential theft - and one of those more than likely impacted you or someone close to you.
3. Evolving regulations that you must comply with, to protect your privacy and your customers’ privacy and security (e.g. GDPR) no matter your industry, “regulated” or not.
4. Demands for increased productivity and IT modernization, enabled by identity came seemingly overnight with the recent crisis moving employees to mandatory remote work. Since last June, we’ve seen a 110% increase of monthly active users of SaaS apps.

Now that everything is connected, and the perimeter has gone away - including many apps (an average of 140 apps used by enterprises today) and devices per user. Especially as users have moved to the new normal of remote work, users are the new perimeter and identity needs to be the control plane.

 

Our customers tell us that by moving identities to the cloud with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), they are automatically getting security and improved user experience. Azure AD provides a full-featured platform with capabilities for you to manage and secure identities for your organizations. With Azure AD as your platform, your developers can and should integrate and build identity connected applications into the Azure AD and Microsoft identity ecosystem. This enables applications, like those from ServiceNow or those that you build, to be more widely adopted in your organization.

Speaking of accelerating adoption of apps, we believe in identity and security solutions from Microsoft, not just for Microsoft. Even if it didn't start this way, Azure AD is the identity solution for not just Office 365 and Azure, but also over 2M apps total, with over 100% growth in the last year.

 

How does this Azure AD + ServiceNow integration work? 

Since we’ve pre-integrated the ServiceNow application, it can be discovered across several surface areas with our identity platform, Azure AD, and Microsoft 365:

1. IT Admins can discover ServiceNow as an app within the Azure portal and in the ServiceNow ITSM Guided Setup. This can help IT admins easily deploy ServiceNow across the company or for specific users/groups because it’s conveniently listed in our Azure AD app gallery and configurable via One-Click Single Sign On and Automatic User Provisioning.
2. Since it’s integrated with Azure AD, you get all the advanced security benefits out of the box. That includes adaptive authentication with the Conditional Access policy engine. You can set Conditional Access policies based on user context such as location, device posture or date/time of a sign-in. For example, you can ensure ServiceNow can only be accessed by a compliant device (such as for BYOD scenarios) or require a user to Multi-Factor Authenticate (MFA).
3. For end-users, ServiceNow is discoverable on the Office 365 app launcher, the newly updated Microsoft MyApps portal, and within Microsoft search on Office.com. When IT provisions ServiceNow across an organization, users can easily discover and access the ServiceNow app.

Watch the demo of this Azure AD and ServiceNow experience at timestamp 18:30 in this Knowledge 2020 session here: https://aka.ms/NOW-K20-AAD-Breakout

 

 

Where are we going with the next wave of innovation together?

Here is the vision for what we do with ServiceNow and Azure AD: Have a complete and integrated solution for managing your users and their resources via the cloud, with security and compliance throughout. Want to learn more about how we will make this a reality with ServiceNow, check our next NOW Community blog…coming soon!

Feel free to share your feedback and ideas in the comments or connect with our team directly on Twitter (@AzureAD). We'd love to hear how you are utilizing the Azure AD and ServiceNow integrations!

 

What are next steps for success for Azure AD + ServiceNow?

1. Connect ALL your apps, especially ServiceNow, to Azure AD for FREE SSO, automatic user provisioning, then turn on MFA for users along with Conditional Access policies. Learn more here: https://www.microsoft.com/AzureAD
2. Be sure to check out the main Microsoft Identity breakout session at Knowledge 2020 (aka.ms/NOW-K20-AAD-Breakout) on-demand. We also have another theater session with the Software Asset Management team showing how we integrate Azure AD app usage. Read the NOW Community blog and watch the K20 session here: https://aka.ms/AzureAD-NOW-SAM-Blog
3. If you don't have Azure AD today, you can try it for free with the trial link here (https://aka.ms/aadtrial) or with any Microsoft offering like Office 365
4. Look out for more blogs on what you can do with Azure AD + ServiceNow in the next few months, including how we are developing new scenarios for the ServiceNow Microsoft Azure AD Spoke.