As a Microsoft identity and access administrator, you design, implement, and operate an organization’s identity and access management by using Microsoft Entra. You configure and manage identities throughout their lifecycles for users, devices, Microsoft Azure resources, and applications. You are responsible for ensuring the application of Zero Trust principles for identity and access solutions. As an identity and access administrator, you provide seamless experiences and self-service management capabilities for users. You plan and implement identity, authentication, and authorization to enable access across applications and resources. You’re also responsible for troubleshooting, monitoring, and reporting on identity and access. You collaborate with many other roles in the organization to drive strategic identity projects, modernize identity solutions, implement hybrid identity solutions, and implement identity governance. You should be familiar with Azure, Microsoft 365 services and workloads, and Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). You should also be familiar with PowerShell and Kusto Query Language (KQL).

As a candidate for this certification, you’re responsible for administering Windows Server as a workload in both on-premises and hybrid environments. In this role, you deploy, implement, manage, and troubleshoot Windows Server in Azure as well as migrating and deploying workloads to Azure. You administer on- identity, security, management, compute, networking, storage, monitoring, high availability, and disaster recovery for Windows Server. You typically collaborate with architects, administrators, and engineers. You use administrative tools and technologies such as Windows Admin Center, PowerShell, Azure Arc, Azure Policy, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and IaaS virtual machine (VM) administration. As a candidate for this certification, you should have several years of experience with Windows Server operating systems. Important The English language version of this certification was updated on January 21, 2026. Review the study guide linked on the Exam AZ-800, Exam AZ-801 and AZ-802 pages for details about recent changes.

As a Microsoft cybersecurity architect, you translate a cybersecurity strategy into capabilities that protect the assets, business, and operations of an organization. You design, guide the implementation of, and maintain security solutions that follow Zero Trust principles and best practices, including security strategies for identity, devices, data, AI, applications, network, infrastructure, and DevOps. Plus, you design solutions for Governance and Risk Compliance (GRC), security operations, and security posture management.​ As a cybersecurity architect, you continuously collaborate with leaders and practitioners in security, privacy, engineering, and other roles across an organization to plan and implement a cybersecurity strategy that meets the business needs of an organization.​ As a candidate for this certification, you have experience implementing or administering solutions in the following areas: identity and access, platform protection, security operations, data and AI security, application security, and hybrid and multicloud infrastructures. You should have expert skills in at least one of those areas, and you should have experience designing security solutions that include Microsoft security technologies. Important The English language version of this certification was updated on July 28, 2026. Review the study guide linked on the Exam SC-100 page for details about recent changes.

This certification is targeted to you, if you’re looking to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of security, compliance, and identity (SCI) across cloud-based and related Microsoft services. If you have an interest in Microsoft SCI solutions, this exam is for you, whether you’re a: Business stakeholder New or existing IT professional Student You should be familiar with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 and want to understand how Microsoft SCI solutions can span across these solution areas to provide a holistic and end-to-end solution.

To earn this Microsoft Applied Skills credential, learners demonstrate the ability to set up and configure Microsoft Sentinel. Candidates for this credential should be familiar with Microsoft Security, compliance, and identity products; the Azure portal; and Azure administration, including role-based access control (RBAC).

As a candidate for this Microsoft Certification, you’re a security engineer who protects organizational systems and data across cloud and hybrid environments by implementing comprehensive security controls that proactively help prevent unauthorized access and mitigate risks. Your role spans multiple security domains, including identity, network, application, data, and compute. You also help ensure that platforms, data, identities, and infrastructure used by AI workloads are securely implemented and monitored. In this role, your responsibilities include: Securing access to resources by using Microsoft Entra ID and Azure Key Vault. Enforcing security and regulatory compliance. Securing storage, databases, and networking. Securing compute. Securing AI solutions. Managing and monitoring security posture. You work closely with architects, administrators, engineers, analysts, and developers responsible for Azure, Microsoft 365, identity and access, information protection, security operations, DevOps, application development, database platforms, and networks. For this exam, you should have practical experience in administration of Azure and hybrid environments, including compute, network, and storage. You need strong familiarity with Microsoft Entra ID and familiarity with Microsoft 365 administration. Tip Review the SC-500 study guide to help you prepare for the exam. Demo the exam experience by visiting our exam sandbox. The Practice Assessment for this exam is not currently available. Practice Assessments are usually available within 8 weeks of the exam being out of beta and generally available.