Let’s discuss Optimize Conditional Access Agent in Entra to Fix Security Blind Spots. It Automatically Strengthen Conditional Access Policies. Microsoft introduced Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra in the Ignite 2025 event.
The Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra is a new capability that helps organizations automatically strengthen and streamline their Conditional Access policies by applying Microsoft’s best practices and Zero Trust learnings.
It evaluates existing policies, recommends improvements, and generates reports to highlight misconfigurations or gaps. The key functions of Conditional Access Optimization Agent policy coverage check, policy review reports and optimization actions.
With policy coverage check, admins can ensures all users, applications, and agent identities are protected by Conditional Access. Suggests new policies or updates to existing ones, aligned with Zero Trust principles.
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Optimize Conditional Access Agent in Entra to Fix Security Blind Spots
When admins are using the Conditional Access Optimization Agent the admins were able to do conditional access tasks 43% faster, 48% more accurate. And one of the jobs that this agent does is help to detect missing zero-trust policies or baselined policies. They were 204% more accurate at finding baseline missing policies with this agent.
| Features |
|---|
| Simplifies Administration |
| Improves Security Posture |
| Supports Zero Trust |
- Non-Human Identities and Agent Identities Gain Access Package Support with Entra Identity Governance for AI Agents
- Setup Risk-Based Conditional Access for Entra Agents to Automatically Protect against Compromised Agents
- How to Manage Agents through Microsoft Entra Agent ID Interface for Security and Zero Trust Enforcement
Here is the Conditional Access Optimization agent. this agent acts like a “policy coach” inside Entra helping you not only enforce Conditional Access but also continuously refine it to stay aligned with best practices and Zero Trust.
Activity Map in Conditional Access Optimization Agent
The “Activity Map” in the Conditional Access Optimization Agent is designed to give administrators a clear, visual overview of how Conditional Access policies are applied across users, apps, and sign‑in activities highlighting gaps, overlaps, and risks.
Device Compliance for All Employees
On the Conditional Access Optimization Agent here choose, Device Compliance for all employees for review. Here i clicked on View all excluded identities. Look at the below screenshot.
On the Excluded identities window, all employees identities is going to excluded. Then I click on the Remove button then this identity is excluded and click on the Save button.
Block Legacy Authentication
Block Legacy Authentication automatically detects where legacy authentication is still being used and recommends blocking policies to close this gap.
This policy applies to all users with no emergency access (break-glass) accounts excluded. In the event of an issue or lockout administrators may be unable to regain access, which could peevent timely recovery during emergencies.
- Click on the Add Account button
Block Multifactor Authentication for Risky Sign-ins
Next going to review Block Multifactor Authentication for Risky Sign-ins. For this clcik on the Block Multifactor Authentication for Risky Sign-ins under Conditional Access Optimization Agent.
To protect those users, graduallly rollout this policy to your users over 5 phases. Phased rollout is a controlled. low-risk approach to deploying Conditional Access policies, starting with the groups with the lowest sign-in impact and increasing to the highest. The agent will create a new policy in an enabled state and start at phase 1 for rollout.
- Click on the Review Phase Out
The five stages in the Phased Rollout of Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra are Report‑Only Policy Creation, Pilot Group Rollout, Expanded Rollout, Full Rollout.
- Report‑Only Policy Creation – The agent generates a Conditional Access policy in report‑only mode so admins can see its potential impact without enforcing it.
- Pilot Group Rollout – The policy is applied to a small, controlled set of users or apps to validate behavior.
- Expanded Rollout – The scope is widened to include more users, apps, or groups once pilot testing is successful.
- Full Rollout – The policy is applied across the entire organization, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
- Monitoring & Adjustment – Admins monitor sign‑in logs and optimization reports, making refinements if anomalies or disruptions are detected
Merged Require Compliant Device and Intune Requirements
The agent found two similar polices that should be combined in order to redoce the number of overlapping policies. The policies are Require compliant device and Intune Requirements. The agent has created this policy in report-only mode that combines the conditions and controls of the two overlapping policies.
You go and create policies in Intune you are using Defender may be you got duplicate policies or may be there is a gap so it is not being used the right way. Its now actually going to help refine those gaps.
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Author
Anoop C Nair has been Microsoft MVP from 2015 onwards for 10 consecutive years! He is a Workplace Solution Architect with more than 22+ years of experience in Workplace technologies. He is also a Blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group Community leader. His primary focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM and Intune. He writes about technologies like Intune, SCCM, Windows, Cloud PC, Windows, Entra, Microsoft Security, Career, etc.