Identity resilience glossary
Granular recovery
Granular recovery restores a selected part of an environment instead of rolling back the whole environment. The recovery unit might be an individual object, a group of objects, or a particular attribute or relationship where the recovery method supports that level of selection. Microsoft's Entra recovery documentation, for example, distinguishes recovery of all supported objects from selection by object type or object ID. Microsoft recovery scope
Why it matters
An identity incident may affect one policy while the rest of the environment remains correct. Limiting recovery to the affected configuration can help preserve unrelated work, such as accounts created or permissions approved after the selected backup. The practical question is how narrowly the team can correct the problem without undoing valid changes.
Illustrative identity example
An administrator accidentally changes one Microsoft Entra Conditional Access policy. The identity team compares that policy with an earlier retained version, reviews the intended correction and recovers the selected policy using a method that supports it. They then test access for affected users and applications. Other policies remain outside the recovery scope.
Common confusion
Object-level recovery is not necessarily attribute-level recovery. Selecting one policy may restore more than the single setting that caused the incident. Supported properties and relationships also vary by platform and recovery method. Review exactly what will change, including legitimate edits made since the recovery point. Microsoft supported properties and limitations