Thomas Maurer explores best practices and platform updates from Commvault SHIFT 2025, emphasizing AI-powered resilience and security for Microsoft identity systems like AD and Entra ID.

Commvault SHIFT Virtual: AI and Cyber Resilience Insights for Microsoft Identity and Cloud

Author: Thomas Maurer

Event Overview

Commvault SHIFT 2025 delivered actionable insights into building cyber resilience for enterprises operating in increasingly AI-driven, hybrid, and multicloud environments. The sessions and keynotes placed a strong emphasis on not just data protection, but also identity resilience—especially for Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Entra ID.

Keynote Highlight:

  • AI-based automation and scale require reconsidering foundational data trust, integrity, and availability.
  • Commvault’s vision centers on making resilience proactive and autonomous, supporting cloud workloads across more than 200 services.

Major Announcements

1. Commvault Cloud Unity Platform:

  • A unified, cloud-native platform integrating data protection, cyber recovery, and identity resilience.
  • Features AI-enabled workload onboarding, risk analysis dashboards, and total cost optimization.
  • Supports broad cloud region and services coverage, including Microsoft workloads.

2. Automated, Clean Cyber Recoveries:

  • AI-powered Threat Scan to detect and isolate malicious files, identify Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), and enable synthetic recovery for clean, verified restores.

3. End-to-End Identity Resilience:

  • Deep integration with Microsoft identity systems (AD and Entra ID).
  • Real-time detection, auditing, and rollback of anomalous AD changes, allowing clean restoration after security incidents.

Technical Breakout Sessions

  • The Phoenix Protocol: What Most People Get Wrong About a Cyber Attack
  • Protecting the AI Stack: What You Need to Know
  • Best Practices for AD & EntraID Recovery: Emphasizes unified view and automated recovery tools for Microsoft identity services.
  • Zero Trust IAM for Hybrid & Multi-Cloud: Focuses on security integration including Microsoft environments.
  • AI Governance with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury: Covers responsible AI practices in large-scale deployments.
  • Accelerate Incident Response with Cleanroom & Security Integrations: Discusses integrating security and AI for better incident response.

Best Practices for Microsoft Identity Security

  • Prioritize protection and rapid recovery of AD and Entra ID to counter evolving attack vectors.
  • Use anomaly audits and real-time rollback for restoring trusted, uncompromised states.
  • Integrate identity resilience with broader data and security platforms for unified management.

Final Thoughts

The sessions and platform updates from SHIFT 2025 show that sophisticated AI security and resilience are now required for modern enterprises, with strong technical convergence on protecting foundational Microsoft cloud and identity components. Technical leaders should review the on-demand SHIFT sessions to gain practical strategies and architectural guidance for secure cloud operations.

Watch On-Demand: Commvault SHIFT 2025

About the Author

Thomas Maurer is EMEA Global Black Belt (GBB) for Sovereign Cloud at Microsoft, with deep expertise in Azure, cloud architecture, and technical community leadership.

This post appeared first on “Thomas Maurer’s Blog”. Read the entire article here