AZ-305 Practice Question: Design identity, governance, and monitoring solutions
Your organization uses Microsoft Entra ID and requires that all external users accessing resources must be approved by a designated reviewer. You need to automate the review process for external identities. What should you implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Privileged Identity Management (PIM) with access reviews, as both involve approvals, but PIM is for privileged roles while access reviews are for ongoing user access certification, especially for external identities.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Microsoft Entra access reviews
Microsoft Entra access reviews allow you to automate the periodic review of external identities, ensuring that only approved users retain access. This feature directly supports the requirement for a designated reviewer to approve or deny external users, with automated reminders and results. It is the correct choice because it is purpose-built for governance of external identities in Entra ID.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Microsoft Purview
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview is a data governance and compliance platform that handles data classification, sensitivity labels, data loss prevention, and audit across multicloud environments. It focuses on governing data assets and regulatory compliance, not on reviewing who can sign in or access applications through Microsoft Entra ID. Therefore it does not provide the identity access review workflow needed to periodically certify external collaborator access.
- ✗
Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
Why it's wrong here
Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is an Entra ID feature that provides just-in-time, time-bound activation of privileged roles, with approval workflows and multi-factor authentication for elevated access. It governs eligibility and activation for roles like Global Administrator, but it is not designed to conduct recurring access reviews for external users' general assignments. PIM can be used alongside access reviews, but by itself it lacks the scope and scheduling capability to certify all external identities' ongoing access across applications and groups.
- ✓
Microsoft Entra access reviews
Why this is correct
Microsoft Entra access reviews enables administrators to create recurring review campaigns for group memberships, enterprise application assignments, and role assignments. Reviewers can sign off on each user's access with a decision and justification, and results can be configured to automatically remove access when needed. This directly meets the requirement for periodic review of external users' access, making it the correct service for this scenario.
- ✗
Conditional Access
Why it's wrong here
Conditional Access is an engine that evaluates runtime signals such as user, device, location, and session risk to enforce policies like blocking access or requiring multi-factor authentication. It does not run scheduled evaluation workflows or produce reviewable records for access certification. While it can mitigate risk at sign-in time, it cannot replace the periodic human attestation process that access reviews provide for external identities.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-305 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-305 exam.