Identity Resilience for AD, Entra ID, and Okta

One comprehensive solution to detect, withstand, and recover from identity attacks.

Identity is the enterprise control plane—and it’s actively targeted to lock out access, cripple operations, and force extended downtime. For most organizations, Active Directory (AD) still anchors authentication and authorization across critical apps and infrastructure, while Microsoft Entra ID and Okta extend that trust into cloud and SaaS. Although AD remains among one of the most targeted attack vectors, hybrid identity environments call for consistent and comprehensive protection across AD, Entra ID, and Okta. That hybrid reality is here to stay—and dangerously attractive to attackers.

Modern adversaries rarely “hack in” through a single door. They compromise identity, escalate privileges, disable defenses, and then use legitimate credentials to move quietly toward ransomware, data theft, or operational disruption. The hardest part isn’t just detecting suspicious activity—it’s ensuring you can prove what changed, contain the blast radius, and restore trust fast across both on-prem and cloud identity systems.

Figure 1: A hybrid identity configuration (where Entra ID and Okta are federated or synced to AD) is common in a majority of enterprises. Security and IT teams need to ensure both that AD, Entra ID, and Okta are secured, protected, and recovered.

Key Benefits

Strengthen cyber resilience across hybrid identity infrastructure
Reduce dwell time and mitigate threats proactively
Rapid, reliable hybrid identity recovery
Limit blast radius with faster containment
Lower risk and impact of identity-based cyber attacks

The challenge

For many organizations, identity can be the weakest link. Security and IT teams are facing more challenges and risk than ever:

Limited visibility into risky identity changes, misconfigurations, and privilege escalation across hybrid identity
Slow or manual recovery of AD after compromise, including uncertainty about what’s “clean”
Gaps in Entra ID and Okta protections, where configuration and identity objects can be altered or deleted at cloud speed
Tool sprawl that fragments detection, response, and recovery across teams and domains
High business impact when identity systems are degraded—even if data backups exist, authentication failure can halt operations

The solution

Cohesity brings an end-to-end solution for protecting the systems that grant access to everything. It’s designed to help security and IT leaders protect identity systems as critical infrastructure—before, during, and after an attack. It aligns to the real sequence of identity compromise:

1. Prepare and harden: reduce identity attack surface

Continuously assess exposure by improving visibility into directory changes, configurations, and identity risk indicators across hybrid identity environments. This strengthens readiness by surfacing conditions that attackers exploit (e.g., privilege pathways, risky changes, and policy weaknesses).

Outcome: fewer easy wins for attackers, stronger identity posture, and clearer risk reporting.

2. Detect and respond: stop identity attacks earlier

When adversaries target identity, speed matters. Cohesity provides Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) capabilities, powered by Semperis, to help detect suspicious directory activity and changes that may indicate compromise—supporting SecOps and IAM/IT teams in rapidly investigating and acting before escalation becomes irreversible.

Outcome: reduced attacker dwell time, faster containment, and better coordination between security and IT operations.

3. Recover and restore trust: get AD back fast and clean

In most hybrid environments, Entra ID and Okta sync from AD. While both require independent backup and recovery capabilities, restoring AD first ensures the authoritative identity source is clean before re-establishing sync to Entra ID. When AD is compromised, “restore from backup” is not enough—you need to restore cleanly, validate integrity, and regain control of authentication at enterprise scale. AD Forest Recovery, powered by Semperis, is purpose-built to support rapid, orchestrated AD recovery, helping teams rebuild and restore AD in a controlled, repeatable way. This is crucial for ransomware scenarios where AD is intentionally damaged, encrypted, or manipulated to block recovery.

Outcome: faster return to operations, reduced recovery risk, and greater confidence that identity is restored to a known-good state.

4. Recover Entra ID: restore cloud identity continuity

Identity resilience fails if cloud identity can’t be restored quickly and securely. Cohesity Cloud Services extends cyber resilience to Entra ID and Okta, helping organizations protect critical cloud identity objects and configurations so they can recover from malicious changes, accidental deletion, or widespread compromise. As with AD recovery, ensuring a clean recovery point—even if threat actors poison identity objects—key for ensuring restoration of cloud identities (with or without a hybrid restore workflow for AD-synced environments).

Outcome: quicker restoration of cloud identity functionality, seamless support for hybrid recovery workflows, and stronger continuity for cloud-first operations.

5. Learn and strengthen: make recovery readiness repeatable

By integrating detection, response, and recovery planning across AD, Entra ID, and Okta environments, Cohesity brings the people, processes, and technology to support a continuous improvement loop: visibility informs hardening, incidents inform controls, and recovery processes become more reliable over time.

Outcome: measurable improvements in identity resilience, audit readiness, and executive-level assurance.

Figure 2: Cohesity Identity Resilience secures, protects, and recovers your hybrid identity infrastructure in one seamless solution.

Hybrid identity protection across the entire attack lifecycle

Ransomware and advanced threats increasingly hinge on identity compromise—because if attackers control identity, they control access, policy, and recovery. Cohesity provides cohesive, end-to-end Identity Resilience that safeguards both Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID across the entire attack lifecycle.

With advanced ITDR, comprehensive AD, Entra ID, and Okta protection, Cohesity brings a unified approach that protects your entire hybrid identity infrastructure—helping organizations reduce risk, recover faster, and restore trust when it matters most.

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