Government agencies and multinational corporations rely on Microsoft’s commercial and sovereign clouds, such as the US Government, China, and others, to meet their productivity and collaboration needs, while adhering to data sovereignty and cybersecurity requirements. Since the launch of support for collaboration across Microsoft Clouds, thousands of customers have successfully enabled application access, managed Azure resources, and used SharePoint across different Microsoft clouds.
To further support these scenarios, we’re excited to announce that cross-tenant synchronization support across Microsoft Clouds—also known as cross-cloud synchronization—is in public preview. This new capability addresses a key challenge we’ve consistently heard from you: the need for a better way to govern the lifecycle of users across clouds. Many of you are still manually inviting external users across tenants and clouds or relying on custom scripts to manage thousands of users. These approaches are time-consuming, error-prone, and can result in users retaining access to resources they shouldn’t have.
Cross-cloud synchronization enables organizations to:
- Save IT admins time by automatically provisioning users across tenants and clouds
- Increase employee productivity by granting access to resources at the right time
- Secure your organization by automatically removing access to resources when a user leaves the company or changes roles
With cross-cloud synchronization now in public preview, organizations can streamline identity management and improve security across multiple environments. But the advantages extend beyond initial setup—the real power comes from leveraging this capability with Microsoft Entra Suite.
Real-world scenarios for cross-cloud synchronization with Microsoft Entra Suite
Enforcing US citizenship for government access
To meet compliance requirements in US Government cloud environments like GCC-High, organizations can use entitlement management and Face Check with Microsoft Entra Verified ID in the commercial cloud to ensure only users with a verified US citizenship credential are provisioned into the US Gov cloud—automating compliance checks and reducing manual effort.
Streamlining onboarding with birthright access
New hires or project team members need immediate access to critical apps hosted in another tenant. With auto-assigned access packages in the target tenant, users can be granted the necessary apps, groups, and roles automatically as part of the synchronization process—helping them hit the ground running.
Controlled access to security operations
When users, such as a security operations center (SOC) team member, need access to sensitive resources, organizations can enforce multi-stage approval workflows in the target tenant or require a Face Check for users to prove their identity. Once approved, users are granted time-limited access to the privileged roles, apps, and groups they need.
Ongoing access governance and cleanup
To prevent unnecessary access from accumulating across tenants, organizations can use Microsoft Entra Access Reviews to periodically validate and right-size cross-tenant access. This ensures users only retain access when it's still needed and helps reduce risk from over-permissioning.
Give it a try
You can experience the benefits of cross-cloud synchronization as part of Microsoft Entra ID Governance—available in the Microsoft Entra Suite, the most comprehensive Zero Trust access solution for the workforce. Microsoft Entra Suite unifies identity and network access to help you manage the full identity lifecycle while enabling secure, compliant access across hybrid and multicloud environments. With cross-cloud synchronization, you can streamline collaboration, ensure up-to-date user data, and simplify access management across multiple Microsoft Entra tenants. Learn more about how to configure cross-cloud synchronization in our Learn documentation.
Start your journey with Microsoft Entra Suite and explore ID Governance capabilities with a free 90-day trial today!
Joseph Dadzie
Read more on this topic
- Governance and cross-tenant synchronization - Microsoft Entra ID | Microsoft Learn
- Microsoft Entra ID Governance - Microsoft Entra ID Governance | Microsoft Learn
- Microsoft Entra Suite Trial - Sign up
Learn more about Microsoft Entra
Prevent identity attacks, ensure least privilege access, unify access controls, and improve the experience for users with comprehensive identity and network access solutions across on-premises and clouds.
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