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App Governance

How IdentityOps monitors, scores, and surfaces risk across every app registration and service principal in your Microsoft Entra tenant.

Applies to: All plansModule: App Governance

What the Apps page shows

The Apps page lists every app registration and service principal in your tenant. Each app is assigned a composite risk score from 0 to 100, and apps are categorized by lifecycle stage so you can focus on what needs attention first.

Scores update with each scan. When something changes — a credential expires, an owner is removed, a new permission is granted — the score adjusts automatically and the change is logged.

Understanding risk scores

Every app receives a composite score from 0 to 100 based on weighted signals. The score is fully deterministic — not AI or LLM generated. Every point in the score traces directly to a computed field, so you can always understand exactly why an app scored the way it did.

Scoring signals

Credential health: Expired secrets or certificates, credentials approaching expiry within 30 days.
Ownership: No owners assigned increases risk significantly. A single owner is a moderate risk (bus-factor of one).
Permission scope: High-privilege API permissions like Directory.ReadWrite.All, Mail.ReadWrite, or RoleManagement.ReadWrite.Directory increase the score.
Activity: Unused apps with high permissions represent dormant risk — elevated privilege with no justification.

Risk levels

Scores are grouped into four risk levels, each with a distinct color throughout the interface.

LevelScore rangeMeaning
CRITICAL75–100Immediate attention required. Multiple high-severity findings.
WARNING40–74Moderate risk. One or more findings that should be addressed.
INFO1–39Low-severity findings. Informational, no urgent action needed.
HEALTHY0No findings detected. App is well-maintained.

Lifecycle stages

Every app is assigned a lifecycle stage. Apps move between stages automatically as scans detect changes, and every transition is logged in the activity trail.

1
Active
App is in active use with recent credential activity or sign-ins.
2
At Risk
App has risk findings that need attention (expired credentials, missing owners, etc.).
3
Ownerless
No owners assigned. Nobody is accountable for this app registration.
4
Cleanup
Marked for cleanup by an admin. Pending removal or archival.
5
Archived
Soft-archived. Retained for audit trail but no longer monitored actively.

Risk findings

Each app receives specific findings based on what IdentityOps detects during a scan. Findings are the individual issues that contribute to the composite risk score.

Expired credentials: Secrets or certificates that have passed their expiry date. These may cause app failures and indicate neglected lifecycle management.
No owners assigned: The app has no designated owners in Entra ID. If something breaks or needs rotating, there is nobody accountable.
High-privilege API permissions: Write scopes, admin-level access, or permissions that exceed what the app likely needs (e.g., Directory.ReadWrite.All on a reporting app).
Permission drift: New permissions added since the last scan that were not present before. May indicate unauthorized scope expansion.
IdentityOps Recommendation

If more than 10% of your app registrations are ownerless, remediation should be prioritized before Conditional Access tuning. Ownership gaps create blind spots that CA policies cannot compensate for.

Risk explanations

Every app gets a plain-English risk explanation describing why it scored the way it did and what to do about it. These are generated from deterministic templates — no LLM, no external API calls. Each sentence in the explanation traces to a specific computed field, so you can always verify the reasoning.

Example explanation: “This app has 2 expired client secrets and no assigned owners. It holds Directory.ReadWrite.All permission but has had no sign-in activity in 90 days. Consider rotating credentials and assigning an owner, or archiving the app if it is no longer needed.”

Actions you can take

IdentityOps is read-only — it never writes to your tenant. Actions either link you to the right place in Entra or record decisions within IdentityOps for your team's audit trail.

Assign owner: Opens a direct link to the app registration in the Entra Admin Center so you can assign an owner.
Acknowledge a finding: Mark a finding as reviewed. Tracks who acknowledged it and when, so your team has an audit trail.
Export findings: Download a CSV of all findings for the app or across all apps for compliance reporting.
Move lifecycle stage: Manually move an app to Cleanup or Archive to signal intent to your team.

Where teams usually go next

→ Review License Governance findings→ Set up daily scans for drift detection→ Enable Pro remediation guidance