6 Steps to Recover Your Business, Not Just Your Data

Modern identity attacks rarely stop at compromised credentials. Attackers target the identity layer itself: modifying Conditional Access policies, abusing privileged accounts, creating rogue applications, and establishing persistence that can impact your entire Microsoft 365 environment. Recovering from these attacks requires more than containment. It requires a structured recovery strategy.

While Microsoft and industry frameworks explain how to detect, contain, and eradicate identity threats, they provide far less guidance on what comes next: restoring Entra ID to a trusted, known-good state. Knowing what to recover, when to recover it, and how identity recovery connects to Microsoft 365 data recovery determines whether your organization returns to full operations quickly or faces prolonged disruption.

This playbook provides a practical framework for every stage of identity recovery, from preparation before an incident through restoring critical Entra ID configurations, validating recovery, and recovering downstream Microsoft 365 data.

Whether you're building your recovery strategy today or strengthening existing cyber resilience plans, this guide offers actionable steps to help your organization recover with greater speed, control, and confidence.

Inside This Playbook:

• Best practices to prepare your Entra ID environment before an identity breach occurs
• A step-by-step walkthrough of the Entra ID recovery lifecycle, from preparation through post-incident review
• Restoration guidance for users, groups, applications, Conditional Access policies, privileged access, and other critical identity configurations
• Sequencing recommendations to avoid dependency issues and accelerate recovery
• Practical considerations for recovering in place versus rebuilding from a trusted baseline
• The connection between Entra ID recovery and Microsoft 365 data recovery in complete business recovery  
• How AvePoint helps automate protection and restore supported Entra ID objects, Admin Portal settings, and Microsoft 365 workloads

Download the playbook to learn how to prepare for identity attacks, restore trusted access, and recover your Microsoft environment with greater resilience.