Observed Signal · Jul 26, 2026 · Technical Release · Source: DEV Community · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Entra ID + Cloudflare Access: Terraform Zero Trust Demo
A technical demo shows a Terraform-managed integration of Microsoft Entra ID with Cloudflare Access using both OIDC and SAML. The author provisions Entra app registrations, demo users/groups, Cloudflare identity providers, a Cloudflare tunnel, DNS, Access applications and policies in one automated pass. The setup uses three users and three Access apps to demonstrate include/require/exclude policy logic, verifies Cf-Access JWTs at the origin against JWKS with pinned issuer/audience, and calls Cloudflare's identity endpoint only after token verification. The repository and Terraform code are published on GitHub.
Practical, reproducible Terraform demo that demonstrates robust Zero Trust verification and policy edge cases for Entra ID + Cloudflare Access; relevant to Identity engineers but not industry-shifting.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- The author built a Terraform-managed demo integrating Microsoft Entra ID with Cloudflare Access over both OIDC and SAML.
- The demo provisions Entra app registrations, demo users and groups, admin consent, Cloudflare identity providers, a Cloudflare tunnel, DNS, and Access applications/policies in one pass.
- The test uses three demo users and three Access applications to explicitly demonstrate include (OR), require (AND), and exclude (NOT) policy logic.
- The origin verifies Cf-Access JWT signatures against the team's JWKS with issuer and audience pinned, then calls /cdn-cgi/access/get-identity using the session cookie only after verification succeeds.
- Admin consent is granted declaratively using azuread_service_principal_delegated_permission_grant requiring Directory.Read.All and GroupMember.Read.All.
Connected Companies & Entities
4 Entities mapped“Microsoft Entra ID driving Cloudflare Access authorisation over both OIDC and SAML, against the same three users, with the resulting identit...”
“Microsoft Entra ID driving Cloudflare Access authorisation over both OIDC and SAML, against the same three users, with the resulting identit...”
“Everything is provisioned by Terraform: the Entra app registrations, the demo users and groups, the admin consent grant, both Cloudflare ide...”
“The code is available at https://github.com/darkedges/cloudflare-zerotrust-entra...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Keyless Cloud Access via Federated Identity
A developer post (published 2026-06-26) describes Zero, a platform by author 'b0gy', which avoids storing long‑lived cloud credentials and instead connects to GCP and AWS using short‑lived, per‑request federated identity tokens. The article explains the implementation patterns — Workload Identity Federation on GCP and OIDC-based AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity on AWS — including an OIDC issuer, JWKS discovery, and short-lived JWT exchanges with the cloud security token service. It contrasts keyless connectors with stored secrets (service account keys) and notes operational tradeoffs: harder setup, added token-exchange latency, and broader error surfaces. For services that do not support federation (GitHub, Slack, Jira), Zero uses OAuth with encrypted token storage. The post frames keyless federation as a security-first tradeoff that reduces secret sprawl and makes trust boundaries visible in cloud IAM.
Microsoft Entra Extensibility Is Control Plane
The article explains that Microsoft Entra’s growing extensibility (custom authentication extensions, PIM custom extensions, lifecycle workflow task extensions, Logic Apps for dynamic approval, etc.) turns Entra into a programmable enforcement engine—and also makes any external code that influences Entra decisions effectively part of the tenant’s Control Plane. The author argues that Azure resources hosting runtime code that shapes Entra decisions (Functions, Logic Apps, queues) are as sensitive as domain controllers or Entra Connect because Azure RBAC inheritance can allow distant Contributor principals to replace runtimes without touching source control. The recommended mitigation is structural: host those runtimes in a narrowly-scoped Control Plane subscription or management group high in the management hierarchy, apply deny-by-default policies, diagnostic requirements, resource locks and strict enrollment checks, and answer a set of security questions before invoking extensions in production. A follow-up will evaluate credential options for such extensions.
Keycloak OIDC setup for ALB Gateway API
A technical how-to demonstrating a Terraform/OpenTofu-based setup to use Keycloak as an OIDC identity provider for ALB (Application Load Balancer) Gateway API and Amazon EKS. The article shows configuration examples using the Keycloak Terraform provider, including client configuration (confidential client), client roles, groups, users, client scopes, protocol mappers (username, roles, audience), and example JWT claims. The author describes using a service-account client for testing and a JWT-federated client for GitHub Actions, and notes a next step to inject client parameters into Kubernetes secrets via External Secrets Operator and Flux CD.
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