Entra Workload ID Premium Can Help Secure Some Service Accounts (for a Fee)

• Entra Workload ID Premium enables conditional access for workload identities (often referred to as “service accounts”).
• Conditional access capabilities are limited but are still useful to help ensure credentials are secured.
• Workload ID Premium also offers identity protection, which helps ensure credentials have not been compromised.

Entra Workload ID Premium is a paid tier of service providing advanced features for managing credentials used for workload identities (often referred to as “service accounts”). Entra Workload ID Premium offers many of the features of Entra ID P2, a similar premium service for user credentials. These features include conditional access, identity protection, and access reviews of the credentials used with workloads. While a basic tier of Workload ID is free, the paid Premium tier adds crucial security features that organizations may want to consider putting in place to protect workload identities from compromise.

Workload Identity Explained

A workload identity is a user identity assigned to a program or process rather than a user. This can include the credentials used by an application, service, script, or container, for authentication and resource-access purposes. Workload identities may sometimes be referred to as service accounts, but the two terms are not completely interchangeable. Workload identities are typically programmatically managed using a workload identity and access management (IAM) system. Workload identities also do not always utilize a username and password combination for authentication, whereas a service account is typically a username and password combination hardcoded into a script, service, or application and is an older, static, and typically more fragile approach.