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What is Azure Conditional Access?

What is Azure conditional access and how can this industry leading modern cyber security perimeter help?

365 iT SOLUTIONS now helps organizations extend cyber security beyond the network to include user and device identity.  Organizations can now utilize these identity signals as part of their access control decisions for their cyber security.

 

Azure conditional access is a proactive cyber security tool used by Microsoft Azure Active Directory to bring signals together allowing the managed IT services provider, IT department, and management to proactive decisions and enforce organizational cyber security policies.

What is Azure Conditional Access?

Azure Conditional Access policies can be defined in their simplest form as “if-then” statements for network access. If a corporate user wants to access a resource, then they must complete an action.  Example: A an HR manager wants to access the human resources data and is required to perform multi-factor authentication to access it.

Azure conditional access has two primary goals for organizations to address:

  • Allow organizations to empower users to be productive from anywhere.
  • Allow organizations to proactively protect their assets.

When an organization decides to use Azure Conditional Access policies, they can apply the right access controls when needed to keep their organization proactively secure as well as not put unnecessary roadblocks for users when not needed.

Special Note about Azure Conditional Access: Conditional Access policies are enforced after first-factor authentication is completed and is not intended to be a first line of defense against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

What are common signals of Azure Conditional Access?

Common signals of Azure Conditional Access that it can take in to account when making a policy decision include the following signals:

  • Azure group or user membership.
  • Corporate policies for specific users and groups.
  • IP Location information.
  • Trusted IP address ranges.
  • Specific countries, regions, and IP ranges to block or allow traffic from.
  • Users with devices of specific platforms can be used when enforcing Conditional Access policies.
  • Users attempting to access specific applications can trigger different Conditional Access policies.
  • Real-time and calculated cyber security risk detection.
  • Policies to identify risky sign-in behavior.
  • Policies to perform password changes or multi-factor authentication.
  • User application access and sessions to be monitored and controlled in real time.

What are common decisions of Azure Conditional Access?

  • Azure Conditional Access – Block access
    • This is the most restrictive decision.
  • Azure Conditional Access – Grant Access
    • Users require multi-factor authentication.
    • Users require device to be marked as compliant.
    • Users require Hybrid Azure AD joined device.
    • Users require approved client app.

What are common applied policies for Azure Conditional Access?

Microsoft Azure Conditional Access allows many organizations to have common access concerns that policies can help with such as:

  • Requiring users with administrative roles to use multi-factor authentication.
  • Requiring the use of Azure management tasks to use multi-factor authentication.
  • Blocking sign-ins for users attempting to use legacy authentication protocols.
  • Require trusted locations for Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication registration.
  • Blocking or granting access from specific locations and blocking risky sign-ins.

What are license requirements for Azure Conditional Access?

In order to enable the Azure Conditional Access feature, the organization will require an Azure AD Premium P2 license.

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