Microsoft AZ-304 Exams and Architecture for the Cloud

Security Defaults – Understanding User Authentication-2

2024-09-12 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

To set up CA, you first need to disable Security Defaults. To perform this, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Active Directory.
On the left-hand menu, click Properties.
At the bottom of the page, click Manage Security Defaults.
A side window will appear, with an option to disable Security Defaults.

The next step is to purchase AD licenses, as follows:

Navigate to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Active Directory.
On the left-hand menu, click Licenses.
On the main page, click Manage your purchased licenses.
Click Try / Buy.
A side window will appear; click Purchase services.
This will open a new browser window: the Purchase Services page of the Microsoft 365 admin center (admin.microsoft.com).
Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Security and Identity under Other categories.
Select Azure Active Directory Premium P2.
Click Buy.
Choose whether to pay monthly or pay for a full year and select how many licenses you need. Click Check out now.
Complete the checkout process.

Once you have completed the checkout process, you need to assign your licenses to your users, as follows:

Navigate back to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Active Directory.
On the left-hand menu, click Licenses.
On the main page, click Manage your purchased licenses.
Click All products.
Click Azure Directory Premium P2 (your licenses count has increased by the number of licenses you have purchased).
Click Assign.
Click Users.
In the side window that appears, select the user(s) you wish to assign licenses to. Click Select.
Click Assignment options.
In the side window that appears, set your license options and click OK.
Click Assign.

With Security Defaults disabled and your premium licenses assigned, you can now configure CA policies, as follows:

Navigate to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Azure AD Conditional Access.
On the left-hand menu, click Named locations.
Click + New location.
On this page, you can define specific countries or IP ranges that users can sign in from. Click the back button in your browser to return to the CA page, or click the CA breadcrumb.
On the left-hand menu, click Policies.
Click New Policy.
Enter Managers under name.
Click Users and groups.
Click the Users and groups checkbox, and then select a user. Click OK.
Click Conditions. You can choose different risk profiles depending on your needs—for example, click Sign-In risk, and then click the Medium checkbox, as in the following example. Click Select:

Figure 3.14 – Assigning risk policies

Choose the action to perform when the policy is triggered. Click Grant under Access controls, and then click the Require multi-factor authentication checkbox. Click Select.
Set the Enable policy to Report-only.
Click Create.

In this example, we have created a simple access policy that only applies to a single user. The policy will trigger if the user’s activity is deemed medium risk, and will then enforce MFA. However, we set the policy to Report-only, meaning that the actual MFA enforcement won’t take place. This is advised when first creating policies in order to ensure that you do not inadvertently lock users out. In other words, it gives you the ability to test policies before applying them.

In this section, we examined how to provide greater control over the user authentication process for internal users. Sometimes, however, we will want to provide access to external users.

Security Defaults – Understanding User Authentication-1

2024-08-25 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Microsoft provides aset of tools called CA—however, these require configuration and ongoing management, plus you must upgrade to the Azure AD Premium P1 tier to use it.

For some organizations, this may either involve too much effort (perhaps you are a small team) or possibly cost too much.

Because security is so important, Microsoft offers Security Defaults—these are a set of built-in policies than protect your organization against common threats. Essentially, enabling this feature preconfigures your AD tenant with the following:

Requires all users to register and use MFA
Requires administrators to perform MFA
Blocks legacy authentication protocols
Protects privileged activities such as accessing the Azure portal

An important note to consider is that Security Defaults is completely free and does NOT require a premium AD license.

It’s also important to understand that because this is a free tier, it’s an all-or-nothing package. It’s also worth noting that the MFA mechanism only works using security codes through a mobile app authenticator (such as Microsoft Authenticator) or a hardware token. In other words, you cannot use the text message or calling features.

Security Defaults is enabled by default on new subscriptions, and therefore you don’t need to do anything. However, for organizations that require more control, you should consider CA.

Understanding and setting up CA

For organizations that want more control over security or that already have an Azure AD Premium P1 or P2 license, CA can provide a much more granular control over security, with better reporting capabilities.

Azure uses several security-based services that can be applied depending on various attributes, known as signals, which are then used to make decisions around which security policies need to be applied.

This process and set of tools are called CA, and this can be accessed in the Azure portal via the AD Security blade.

Tip

For the exam, Azure CA requires an Azure AD Premium P1 license.

Standard signals you can use when making decisions include the following:

User or group membership: For example, if users are in a group that will give them access to particularly sensitive systems or high levels of access—that is, an admin group.
IP location: For example, when users are signing in from a controlled IP range such as a corporate network, or if users are signing in from a particular geography that has specific local requirements.
Device-specific platforms, such as mobile devices, may need different security measures.
Application: Similar to groups, specific applications, regardless of role, may need additional protective measures—for example, a payroll application.
Real-time risk detection: Azure Identity Protection monitors user activity for “risky” behavior. If triggered, this can force particular policies to be activated, such as a forced password reset.
Microsoft Cloud App Security: Enables application sessions to be monitored, which again can trigger policies to be applied.
Terms of use: Before accessing your systems, you might need to get consent from users by requesting a terms-of-use policy to be signed. A specific Azure AD policy can be defined, requiring users to sign this before they can sign in.

Once a signal has been matched, various decisions can then be made regarding a user’s access. These include the following:

Block Access

–Block the user from proceeding entirely.

Grant Access, which is further broken down into the following:

–Require MFA

–Require device compliancy (via device policies)

–Require device to be Hybrid Azure AD-joined

–Requirement an approved client app

–Requirement of an app protection policy—that is, a review

Understanding conditional access, MFA and security defaults – Understanding User Authentication

2024-06-30 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

In today’s environments that often expand beyond an organization’s network into the cloud, controlling access while still enabling users to access their resources becomes more complicated.

An additional complication is the fact that different users may have other requirements. For example, a system’s administrators most definitely need the most secure access policies in place. In contrast, an account that will always have more limited access anyway may not need quite as stringent measures because they won’t be accessing (or be granted access to) particularly risky systems should they be compromised.

Another example is where a user is signing in from—if a user is on the corporate network, you already have physical boundaries in place; therefore, you don’t need to be as concerned as a user accessing from a public network.

You could argue that you should always take the most secure baseline; however, the more security measures you introduce, the more complex a user’s sign-on becomes, which in turn can impact a business.

It is, therefore, imperative that you get the right mix of security for who the user is, what their role is, the sensitivity of what they are accessing, and from where they are signing in.

MFA

Traditional usernames and passwords can be (relatively) easily compromised. Many solutions have been used to counteract this risk, such as requiring long and complex passwords, forcing periodic changes, and so on.

Another, more secure way is to provide an additional piece of information—generally, one that is randomly generated and delivered to you via a pre-approved device such as a mobile phone. This is known as MFA.

Usually, this additional token is provided to the approved device via a phone call, text message, or mobile app, often called an authentication app.

When setting up MFA, a user must register the mobile device with the provider. Initially, a text message will be sent to verify that the user registering the device owns it.

From that point on, authentication tokens can only be received by that device. We can see the process in action in the following diagram:

Figure 3.13 – MFA

Microsoft Azure provides MFA for free; however, the paid tiers of Azure AD offer more granular control.

On the Azure AD free tier, you can use a feature called Security Defaults to enable MFA for ALL users, or at the very least on all Azure Global Administrators when Security Defaults isn’t enabled. However, the free tier for non-global administrators only supports a mobile authenticator app for providing the token.

With an Azure AD Premium P1 license, you can have more granular control over MFA through the use of CA, which allows you only to use MFA based on specific scenarios—for example, when accessing publicly over the internet, but not from a trusted location such as a corporate network.

Azure AD Premium P2 extends MFA support by introducing risk-based conditional access. We will explore these concepts shortly, but first we will delve into what is available with Security Defaults.

Federated authentication – Understanding User Authentication

2024-05-09 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Federated authentication uses an entirely separate authentication system such as Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). AD FS has been available for some time to enable enterprises to provide SSO capabilities for users by extending access management to the internet.

Therefore, some organizations may already make use of this, and it would therefore make sense to leverage it.

AD FS provides additional advanced authentication services, such as smartcard-based authentication and/or third-party MFA.

Generally speaking, it is recommended to use PHS or PTA. You should only consider federated authentication if you already have a specific requirement to use it, such as the need to use smartcard-based authentication.

Azure AD Connect Health

Before we leave authentication and, specifically, AD Connect, we must look at one last aspect of the service: AD Connect Health.

Azure AD Connect Health provides different types of health monitoring, as follows:

AD Connect Health for Sync, which monitors the health of your AD DS to Azure AD.
AD Connect Health for AD DS, which monitors your domain controllers and AD.
AD Connect Health for AD FS, which monitors AD FS servers.

There are three separate agents, one for each scenario; as with the main AD Connect agent, the download link for the AD Connect Health agent can be accessed in the Azure portal, as follows:

Navigate to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Active Directory.
In the left-hand menu, click AD Connect.
On the main page, click Azure AD Connect Health under Health and Analytics.
You will see the links to the AD Connect Health agents under Get tools, as in the following example:

Figure 3.12 – Downloading the AD Connect Health agents

The AD Connect Health blade also gives you a view on any alerts, performance statistics, usage analytics, and other information related to the AD.

Some of the benefits include the following:

Reports on these issues:

–Extranet lockouts

–Failed sign-ins

–Privacy compliance

Alerts on the following:

–Server configuration and availability

–Performance

–Connectivity

Finally, you need to know that to use AD Connect Health, the following must apply:

You must install an agent on your infrastructure on any identity servers you wish to monitor.
You must have an Azure AD P1 license.
You must be a global administrator to install and configure the agent.
You must have connectivity from your services to Azure AD Connect Health service endpoints (these endpoints can be found on the Microsoft website).

As we can see, Azure provides a range of options to manage authentication, ensure user details are synchronized between and cloud, and enable easier sign-on. We also looked at how we can monitor and ensure the health of the different services we use for integration.

In the next section, we will look at ways, other than just with passwords, we can control and manage user authentication.

Password Writeback – Understanding User Authentication

2024-04-20 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

As we have already mentioned, one of the benefits Azure AD provides is self-service password resets—that is, the ability for users to reset their passwords by completing an online process. This process results in the user’s credentials being reset in the cloud—however, if you have hybrid scenarios with those same accounts, you would typically want to have a password reset performed in the cloud to write that change back to the directory.

To achieve this, we use an optional feature in AD Connect called Password Writeback.

Password Writeback is supported in all three hybrid scenarios—PHS, PTA, and AD Federation.

Using Password Writeback enables enforcement of password policies and zero-delay feedback—that is, if there is an issue resetting the password in the AD, the user is informed straightaway rather than waiting for a sync process. It doesn’t require any additional firewall rules over and above those needed for AD Connect (which works over port 443).

Note, however, that this is an optional feature, and to use it, the account that AD Connect uses to integrate with your AD must be set with specific access rights—these are the following:

Reset password
Write permissions on lockoutTime
Write permissions on pwdLastSet

AD Connect ensures that the user login experience is consistent between cloud and hybrid systems. However, AD Connect has an additional option—the ability to enable a user already authenticated to the cloud without the need to sign in again. This is known as Seamless SSO.

Seamless SSO

Either PHS or PTA can be combined with an option called Seamless SSO. With Seamless SSO, users who are already authenticated to the corporate network will be automatically signed in to Azure AD when challenged.

As we can see in the example in the following diagram, if you have a cloud-based application that uses Azure AD for authentication and you have Seamless SSO enabled, users won’t be prompted again for a username and password if they have already signed in to an AD:

Figure 3.11 – SSO

However, it’s important to note that Seamless SSO is for the user’s device that is domain-joined—that is, domain-joined to a network. Devices that are joined to Azure AD or Hybrid Azure AD-joined use primary refresh tokens also to enable SSO, which is a slightly different method of achieving the same SSO experience but using JSON web tokens (JWT).

In other words, Seamless SSO is a feature of hybrid scenarios where you are using AD Connect. SSO is a single sign-on for pure cloud-managed devices.

Password Hash Synchronization – Understanding User Authentication

2024-02-19 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Password Hash Synchronization (PHS) ensures a hash of the user’s password is copied from the directory into the Azure AD. When a user’s password is stored in AD, it is stored as a hash; that is, the password has a mathematical algorithm applied to it that effectively scrambles it. A user’s password is prevented from being readable if the underlying database is compromised.

With Azure PHS, the password that is already hashed is hashed once again—a hash of a hash—before it is then stored in the Azure AD, providing an extra level of protection, as per the example shown in the following diagram:

Figure 3.9 – Azure PHS

The result of all this is that when a user authenticates against Azure AD, it does so directly against the information stored in the Azure AD database.

An AD Connect synchronization client is required on a computer in your organization if communications to your domain are severed for whatever reason. Users can still authenticate because they are doing so against information in Azure AD.

One potential downside, however, is that this synchronization process is not immediate. Therefore, if a user updates their details, it won’t reflect in the Azure AD accounts until the sync process has taken place, which by default takes 30 minutes. However, this can be changed, or synchronizations can be forced, which is useful if a bulk update is performed, especially on disabling accounts.

Note that some premium features such as Identity Protection and Azure AD DS require PHS.

For some organizations, storing the password hash in Azure AD is simply not an option. For these scenarios, one option would be pass-through authentication (PTA).

Azure AD PTA

With PTA, when a user needs to authenticate, the request is forwarded to an agent that performs the authentication and returns the result and authentication token, as in the example shown in the following diagram:

Figure 3.10 – Azure PTA

Another reason you may wish to go for this option is if any changes to user accounts must be enforced across the enterprise immediately.

These agents must have access to your AD, including unconstrained access to your domain controllers, and they need access to the internet. You therefore need to consider the security implications of this, and the effort involved; for example, opening firewall ports. All traffic is, of course, encrypted and limited to authentication requests.

Because PTA works by handing off the process to an agent, you need to consider resilience. It is recommended you install the AD Connect agent on at least three servers to both distribute the load and provide a backup should one of the agents go offline.

If you still lose connectivity to your agents, authentication will fail. Another failsafe is to use PHS, although this, of course, requires storing password hashes in Azure AD, so you need to consider why you opted for PTA in the first place.

Integrating AD – Understanding User Authentication

2024-01-24 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

One of the first steps is to understand how your organization wishes to authenticate its users and from where. A cloud-native approach may be sufficient for some, but some form of integration with an on-premises directory will be required for others. We will look at what they are in the following sections.

Cloud native

The simplest scenario is cloud native; we only need to set up user accounts within Azure AD. Authentication is performed via the web using HTTPS, and access is only required into Azure or other services that integrate with Azure AD—such as a web application using token-based authentication, as we can see in the following diagram:

Figure 3.6 – Cloud-native authentication

Cloud native is mostly used by new organizations or those without an existing directory service. For companies that already have an AD database, it is common to integrate with it, and for this we can use Azure AD Connect.

Azure AD Connect

Azure AD Connect provides the most straightforward option when you need to provide integration with AD.

AD Connect is a synchronization tool that you install on an on-premises server and that essentially copies objects between your on-premises network and your Azure AD.

This scenario is excellent for providing access to Azure resources for existing users and has self-service capabilities such as a password reset, although this requires the Azure AD Premium add-on.

In a typical use case, you may have a web application deployed in Azure that you need to provide remote access to for your users. In other words, users may be connecting to the web app over the public internet, but still need to be challenged for authentication. The following diagram depicts such a scenario:

Figure 3.7 – Hybrid authentication

Azure AD Connect provides a way of keeping your user details (such as login name and password) in sync with the accounts in Azure AD.

Also, note there is no VNET integration—that is, the web apps themselves are not connected to a VNET that is accessed via a VPN or express route. When users try to access the web app, they will authenticate against Azure AD.

When setting up AD Connect, you have several options. You can set up AD Connect to only replicate a subset of users using filtering—so, you should carefully consider which accounts are actually needed and only sync those required.

The AD Connect agent is installed on a server in your environment. The only requirement is that it must have access to the AD by being installed on a domain-connected computer.

The download link for the AD Connect agent can be retrieved by going to the AD Connect menu option in the Azure AD blade in the Azure portal. To access it, perform the following steps:

Navigate to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
In the top bar, search for and select Active Directory.
In the left-hand menu, click AD Connect.
You will see the link to the AD Connect agent, as in the following example:

Figure 3.8 – Getting the AD Connect agent download link

Copy the agent onto the server you wish to install it and run it, then follow through the installation wizard.

It is recommended that you install the agent on at least two or, preferably, three servers in your environment to protect the synchronization process should the primary server fail.

Important note

The AD Connect agent cannot be actively synchronizing on more than one server. When installing the agent on the standby servers, you must configure them to be in stand-by mode. In the event of the primary server failing, you need to manually reconfigure one of the secondary servers and take them out of stand-by mode.

An important aspect of Azure AD Connect is how users’ passwords are validated, which in turn defines where the password is stored.

Azure tenants – Understanding User Authentication

2023-12-02 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Each tenant has its own set of users; therefore, if you have more than one tenant, you would have distinctly separate user databases.

A tenant, therefore, defines your administrative boundaries, and Azure subscriptions can only belong to one single tenant, although a single tenant can contain multiplesubscriptions, as we can see in the following diagram:

Figure 3.5 – Azure AD tenants

A single tenant is generally sufficient for corporate systems whereby only internal people require access. However, there are scenarios whereby you may want to build applications that support users from different companies.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM are a classic example. This is built as a single saleable system; however, it is multi-tenant in that because it is made for external users and not just Microsoft employees, it must be able to support sign-on from other organizations.

Another scenario to consider is whether you want to separate your users into development and production tenants. For some, a single tenant that houses the same user accounts for development and production systems is acceptable. In such cases, production and development may instead be covered in separate subscriptions, or even just different resource groups within a subscription.

However, having a single tenant makes it harder to test new identity policies, for example, and therefore a separate tenant may be required. While it is possible to move Azure subscriptions between tenants, because each tenant has a unique user database, doing so essentially resets any roles and permissions you have set.

As you can see, it is essential to define your tenant strategy early on to prevent problems later.

Azure AD editions

Azure AD provides a range of management tools; however, each user must be licensed, and depending on the type of license, this will determine which tools are available.

Out of the box, Azure provides a free tier known as Azure AD Free.

The free tier provides user and group management, on-premises synchronization, basic reports, and self-service password change facilities for cloud users. In other words, it gives you the absolute basics you need to provide your cloud-based access.

For more advanced scenarios, you can purchase AD Premium P1 licenses. Over and above the free tier, P1 lets your hybrid users—those with synchronized accounts between on-premises and cloud—to access both on-premises and cloud resources seamlessly.

It also provides more advanced administration tooling and reporting, such as dynamic groups, self-service group management, Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM), and cloud writebacks for password changes; that is, if a user changes their password through the cloud-based self-service tool, this change will write back to the on-premises account as well.

AD Premium P2 gives everything in basic and P1 licenses but adds on Azure AD Identity Protection and Privileged Identity Management (PIM). We will cover each of these in detail later, but for now, it’s essential for the exam to understand you’ll need a P2 license to use these advanced features.

Finally, you can also get additional Pay As You Go licenses for Azure AD Business-to-Consumer (B2C) services. These can help you provide identity and access management solutions for customer-facing apps.

In this section, we have looked at how AD and Azure AD differ, how we can provide services for external users, and what the different editions provide. Next, we will consider how we integrate an existing on-premises directory with the cloud.

Azure AD versus AD DS – Understanding User Authentication

2023-10-05 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Azure AD is the next evolution. It takes identity to the next level by building upon AD DS and provides an Identity as a Service (IDaaS) to provide this same level of security and access management to the cloud.

Just as with AD DS, Azure AD is a database of users that can be used to grant access to all your systems. It’s important to understand that it is an entirely separate database— one that is stored within Azure—and therefore the underlying hardware and software that powers it is wholly managed by Azure—hence IDaaS.

In a traditional on-premises world, you would be responsible for building directory servers to host and manage AD DS. As an IT administrator or architect, you need to consider how many servers you require and what specifications they need to be to support your user load and resilience, to ensure the system is always available. If your identity system failed due to hardware failure, access to all your systems would be blocked.

Azure AD is a managed service, and Microsoft ensures the integrity, security, and resilience of the platform for you.

Whereas AD DS secures domain-joined devices, Azure AD secures cloud-based systems such as web apps. With Azure Web Apps, for example, they are not domain-joined to an internal network. Users may authenticate over the internet—that is, over public networks, as opposed to internal networks. As such, the protocols used must also be different—NTLM and Kerberos used in AD DS would not be suitable and, instead, traditional web protocols must be used—that is, HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), as depicted in the following diagram:

Figure 3.4 – Azure AD versus AD DS protocols

Azure AD also integrates with other Microsoft online services such as Office 365. If you sign up for Microsoft Office 365, an Azure AD tenant will be created for you to manage your users. This same “tenant” can also be used to manage your Azure subscriptions and the apps you build within them.

Azure AD is distinctly separate from AD DS—that is, they are entirely different databases. However, you can link or synchronize Azure AD and your on-premises AD DS, effectively extending your internal directory into the cloud. We will cover this in more detail later, but for now, understand that although different, AD DS and cloud-based Azure AD can be connected.

Important note

Azure AD, even with synchronization, does not support domain-joining virtual machines (VMs). For domain-joined VMs in Azure, either allow AD DS traffic back to on-premises, build domain controllers within the Azure network or use Azure AD DS, which is a fully managed AD DS solution.

The following table shows some of the common differences between the two services:

An instance of Azure AD is called an Azure tenant. Think of a tenant as the user database. In the next section, we will look at tenants in more detail.

Why AD? – Understanding User Authentication

2023-09-30 / Grace Oducado / 0 Comments

Let’s take a step back and consider a straightforward scenario: that of an online e-commerce website. Before you can order something, you need to register with that website and provide some basic details—a sign-in name, an email, a password, and so on.

A typical website such as the one shown in the following diagram may simply store your details in a database and, at its simplest, this may just be a user record in a table:

Figure 3.1 – Simple username and password authentication

For more advanced scenarios that may require different users to have different levels of access—for example, in the preceding e-commerce website—the user databases may need to accommodate administrative users as well as customers. Administrative users will want to log in and process orders and, of course, we need to ensure the end customers don’t get this level of access.

So, now, we must also record who has access to what, and ensure users are granted access accordingly, as in the example shown in the following diagram:

Figure 3.2 – Role-based authorization

The same would also be valid for a corporate user database. For example, the company you work for must provide access to various internal systems—payroll, marketing, sales, file shares, email, and so on. Each application will have its own set of security requirements, and users may need access across multiple systems.

For corporate users, Microsoft introduced Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), which is a dedicated identity management system that allows businesses to manage user databases in a secure and well-organized way. Users in an AD are granted access to other systems (provided they support it) from a single user database. Microsoft AD DS takes care of the complexity and security of user management. See the example shown in the following diagram:

Figure 3.3 – AD

From a single account, IT administrators can provide access to file shares, email systems, and even web applications—provided those systems are integrated with AD. Typically, this would be achieved by domain-joining the device that hosts the application—be it an email server, web server, or file server; that is, the hosting device becomes part of the network, and AD manages not only the user accounts but the computer accounts as well.

In this way, the identity mechanism is a closed system—that is, only internal computers and users have access. Although external access mechanisms have been developed over time to provide remote access, these are still about securely connecting users by essentially extending that “internal” network.

Microsoft AD DS uses specific networking protocols to manage the security of devices and users—that is, the way devices communicate with each other—known as Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA); they are New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM) and Kerberos.

Microsoft AD DS is a common standard today for many organizations. Still, as discussed, it is built around the concept of a closed system—that is, the components are all tightly integrated by enforcing the requirement for them to be “joined.”