Troye exposes Entra ID backup blind spot

Helen Kruger, CEO of Troye. (Image: Troye)

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Many organisations naively believe that Microsoft’s shared responsibility model covers Microsoft Entra ID – formerly Azure AD – but it doesn’t. Troye argues that relying on Microsoft alone to secure your identity infrastructure is a recipe for disaster.

“That is why we are urging South African businesses to adopt Redstor’s Entra ID Backup, a proactive and comprehensive solution designed to safeguard identity data – and recover it in minutes, not weeks,” says Troye CEO Helen Kruger.

Microsoft Entra ID is at the core of modern identity and access management and underpins everything from user authentication to conditional access policies. However, as experts have warned, Entra ID’s native tools offer limited backup and recovery, with logs retained for only 30 days and no ability to roll back critical changes like permission misconfigurations or deleted roles.

That means a breach, insider threat, misconfiguration or accidental deletion can cause catastrophic damage – without any reliable way to recover.

Redstor delivers immutable, cloud-native backups of your Entra ID environment, including user accounts, roles, group memberships, admin units, Intune policies and conditional access configurations. With unlimited retention, you can restore any deleted or modified object at any time – even if months or years have passed – breaking Microsoft’s 30-day limitation.

Kruger says recovery is granular and fast. “You can restore individual user objects, specific permissions or entire policy sets within seconds – or roll back unwanted changes using built-in change comparison tools.”

Redstor's backing of Entra ID closes the identity recovery gap left by Microsoft. It provides instant restore across core identity components, automated change tracking and ransomware‑resistant backups stored off‑site with AES‑256 encryption and immutable retention – meeting compliance standards such as ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC 2 and HIPAA.

“For Troye’s clients, this means peace of mind: even if Entra ID is compromised, corrupted or misconfigured, business continuity is preserved – and recovery is measured in minutes, not days,” she adds.

A recent MSP case study highlighted how a client's global admin account was compromised, resulting in over 1 800 unauthorised changes across its Entra ID tenant. Without Redstor, remediation took days of manual effort, and relied heavily on incomplete logs. After adoption, automatic restores eliminated that overhead and significantly reduced downtime.

This solution is essential for organisations using Entra ID – or Microsoft 365 – that cannot rely on Microsoft’s limited native recovery tools:

• Enterprises with high compliance or audit requirements
• Businesses vulnerable to insider threats, misconfiguration or ransomware
• Organisations lacking built-in identity recovery tools
• MSPs and IT teams that want a multi‑tenant, scalable backup solution

As a trusted Redstor partner in South Africa, Troye delivers everything needed to protect Entra ID from identity loss – offering full implementation and seamless integration into your Microsoft 365 and Entra ID environment, along with local support aligned to South African regulatory requirements, and expert training and consultancy to strengthen identity resilience and recovery readiness.

“If you're still trusting Microsoft to recover your identity configurations, you’re risking everything. We recommend Redstor’s Entra ID Backup as a strategic, insurance-aligned safety net. It ensures that your identity infrastructure is not only protected, but recoverable, swiftly and precisely – because identity data is the backbone of modern IT infrastructure,” Kruger concludes.