{"id":21242,"date":"2020-06-09T12:56:03","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T16:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sherweb.com\/blog\/?p=21242"},"modified":"2025-09-06T01:33:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:33:35","slug":"azure-ad-premium-p1-for-microsoft-365","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sherweb.com\/blog\/partner\/partner-microsoft-news-enablement\/azure-ad-premium-p1-for-microsoft-365\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure AD Premium P1 for Microsoft 365 Business Premium: great news for SMBs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft recently announced<\/a> that it will be adding its Azure Active Directory Premium P1 license to Microsoft 365 Business Premium<\/a> (formerly Microsoft 365 Business) subscriptions. This is great news for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers. The Azure AD P1 license\u2014we\u2019ll just call it P1 to keep things simple\u2014brings a powerful set of enterprise security, identity and access control tools to what will now certainly be Microsoft\u2019s flagship cloud offering for SMBs. And it does so at no added cost.<\/p>\n

Microsoft is adding the P1 license to new subscriptions now and will be rolling it out to existing subscribers in the coming weeks. This is particularly great news for clients grappling with long-term remote work planning.<\/p>\n

The features in P1 are designed to facilitate secure access to work applications from anywhere. Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus Azure AD P1 will let you transform your clients\u2019 modern workplace into a work-from-anywhere<\/a> workplace.<\/p>\n

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Learn how to resell Microsoft 365 and help your client’s digital transformation with our guide<\/a><\/h3>\n

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Expanding the toolset for SMB clients<\/h2>\n

Microsoft renamed its 365 Business plan to Business Premium when the P1 license was added. This was part of a wider renaming of all their small- and medium-sized business-focused offerings. The Business Premium plan is still intended for SMBs with 300 users or less.<\/p>\n

Some of the free Azure AD features were previously available in Microsoft 365 plans, the most important being Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), self-service password resets and conditional access policies. Adding the entire P1 license to Microsoft 365 Business Premium is part of Microsoft\u2019s efforts to help SMBs establish more secure remote work conditions<\/a> for the current COVID-19 crisis and beyond.<\/p>\n

What does Azure AD P1 add to 365 Business Premium?<\/h2>\n

P1 licenses will give Sherweb partners and their clients access to advanced group, identity and access control policies for more granular control over how users and their devices access cloud resources. Azure AD P1 also offers a few key enterprise-level features we wanted to highlight:<\/p>\n

Cloud App Discovery<\/h3>\n

It was hard to keep track of BYOD devices and consumer cloud app usage even before remote work became the new normal. Now, contending with these security risks is something practically every business faces. This just amplifies the challenge of protecting your client\u2019s cloud infrastructure against data breaches and the unwanted effects of shadow IT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cloud App Discovery tool analyzes your client\u2019s cloud traffic logs. Any activity in their environment coming from a list of over 16,000 different cloud apps is flagged and scored for risk level. You can access reports that measure and rank app usage by traffic volume, number of users, individual user, or number of outbound web requests by app.<\/p>\n

This helps you identify and prioritize what data is at risk, what shadow IT systems might have access to your client\u2019s data, and the relative risk those shadow systems pose to your clients’ data integrity.<\/p>\n

Application Proxy<\/h3>\n

Businesses that rely on critical on-premise applications have been particularly challenged by the sudden increase in remote workers. Many clients and Sherweb partners have figured out reverse proxy or VPN solutions that are good enough, but the Azure Application Proxy now available with P1 licenses can be a superior choice. It\u2019s a lightweight software agent that gives access to specific on-premise apps without exposing larger segments of a client\u2019s network.<\/p>\n

Remote users use their standard Azure single sign-on (SSO) account to access the Application Proxy. This will grant them access to both authorized on-premise apps and their cloud apps, like Teams, SharePoint, other Office apps and Remote Desktop.<\/p>\n

Using the Proxy for remote access also mitigates the need to open inbound connections on the client\u2019s firewall. And it\u2019s often more cost effective than a VPN or other proxy setups, as it doesn\u2019t require any local infrastructure or network changes.<\/p>\n

Dynamic Groups<\/h3>\n

Any partner who\u2019s used dynamic groups to manage an enterprise client knows what a time saver they can be. Dynamic AD groups allow you to automatically add and remove users from security groups based on user or device properties (though an Office 365 group can only be a user group).<\/p>\n

For example, you can define a \u201cGuest\u201d dynamic group that automatically collects all guest accounts spread around the tenant so you can centrally manage them. Also, any time a user or device attribute changes, Azure AD runs all dynamic group rules and automatically updates membership accordingly.<\/p>\n

Password-less authentication<\/h3>\n

Password fatigue<\/a> is real. Perhaps you\u2019ve seen an uptick in password-related support requests since people have shifted to working from home. There\u2019s a whole range of personal laptops and mobile devices now trying to authenticate against client resources. Thankfully, the P1 license lets you enable password-less authentication for your client\u2019s cloud apps.<\/p>\n

Password-less authentication replaces passwords by performing multi-factor authentication<\/a> against something users have with them, against information they know, or against biometrics. Azure AD currently supports three different password-less authentication options:<\/p>\n