MICROSOFT SECURITY DEFAULTS CODE

For example, you can create a policy that applies anyone accessing Office 365 and one that applies only to folks trying to use PowerApps. Cloud apps or actions - You can also specify which cloud apps or actions the policy will include or exclude.A policy might apply all users, all Finance team members, or just B2B guests and external users. Users and groups - The Users and groups section specifies who the policy will include or exclude.

The Assignments section is the “if” portion of the policy it specifies what has to be true for the policy to kick into action. The Name section is straightforward enough, but let’s review the other three critical elements of Conditional Access: Assignments, Access controls and Enable policy. Here’s what the screen for creating a policy looks like: Components of an Azure AD Conditional Access policyĮssentially, a Conditional Access policy is an if-then statement: If an authentication attempt meets the specified criteria ( assignments), then apply the specified access controls. To see how it works, let’s dive into the details. Moreover, you can create multiple policies that work together to put guardrails in place exactly where you need them. For instance, you can deny all requests that come from North Korea, allow all requests that come from your headquarters location, and require MFA for all the rest. You’re not limited to simple facts like whether the user is an admin you can also factor in things like the user’s location and the type of authentication protocol being used.

But you can get a lot more granular than that. For example, you can create a policy to require administrators - but not regular business users - to complete an MFA step. And it can be woefully insufficient in others, like when it’s a highly privileged admin accessing highly sensitive systems and you really want additional evidence that the authentication request is legitimate.Īzure AD Conditional Access helps you strengthen your authentication process in a way that avoids issues like these. It introduces an unnecessary hassle in most cases, when legitimate users are just trying to do their jobs, increasing user frustration and hurting productivity. The trouble is, MFA is a pretty blunt tool. Microsoft reports that its telemetry shows that 99.9% of organization account compromise could be stopped by simply using MFA. These strategies can be extremely effective.

MICROSOFT SECURITY DEFAULTS CODE

Usually that takes the form of multi-factor authentication (MFA) - requiring the user to supply a code sent to their mobile device, a fingerprint or some other additional authentication factor. To reduce these risks, organizations can put additional authentication hurdles in place. But sometimes, it’s an attacker who has stolen or guessed a user’s credentials, and now they’re merrily romping around your network, and your organization is at risk of ending up in the data breach headlines or being slapped with an enormous compliance fine. Most of the time, it’s the legitimate account owner typing them in and everything’s fine - the user can go on to access all the data, applications and other resources they’ve been granted permissions for. By creating Conditional Access policies, you can fine-tune your authentication process - without unduly burdening users.Ĭonsider how the authentication process has traditionally worked: Organizations require users to supply a user ID and password. What is Conditional Access?Ĭonditional Access is a feature of Azure AD that helps organizations improve security and compliance. Have questions about Microsoft Azure AD Conditional Access? You’re in luck! Today, I’m going to lay out all the key things you need know.

Microsoft security defaults