Entra Backup & Recovery: What to Know

Key insights

• Entra Backup and Recovery (Preview): A native Microsoft Entra feature that creates automated daily snapshots of supported Entra ID objects.
  Public preview began March 19, 2026, and it aims to speed up recovery after accidental changes or security incidents.
• Scope and retention: Backups capture users, groups, roles, and supported tenant objects once per day and keep up to five days of history.
  Backups are stored in the tenant’s geo and are tamper-proof, so even Global Administrators cannot delete or alter them.
• Access and admin roles: Use the Microsoft Entra admin center under "Backup and recovery (Preview)" to view backups, difference reports, and recovery history.
  Role-based access controls include Microsoft Entra Backup Reader to view and Microsoft Entra Backup Administrator to perform recoveries; Global Admins inherit full access.
• Difference reports: Generate a pre-restore comparison that shows exact changes between the backup and the current tenant state.
  This helps you confirm what will change and avoid unintended overwrites before you restore.
• Recovery options and limits: Restore a full backup or scope recovery by object type or specific object ID, then monitor progress in Recovery History.
  Only one recovery job runs at a time; Recovery History records status, affected objects, and timestamps for auditing.
• Key benefits: Enables fast incident response, reduces downtime, and requires no extra infrastructure since Microsoft manages the backups.
  It complements existing protections like soft delete and protected actions and improves operational transparency for compliance.

Keywords

Entra Backup and Recovery, Entra Backup and Recovery preview, Microsoft Entra backup, Entra identity backup, Azure AD backup and recovery, Entra disaster recovery, Entra restore guide, Entra backup best practices