Conditional Access
For Microsoft 365
For Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 offers some fantastic benefits over traditional on-premise infrastructure. No costly infrastructure required, no advanced IT knowledge required, 100 GB mailbox, online meetings, document collaboration, 99.9 % uptime, flexibility allowing businesses to provide users with only the services they need and anytime and anywhere access to emails, documents, contacts, and calendars on any device.
This blog will explore the last benefit – anytime and anywhere access to Office 365.
As the image suggests, Office 365 means that we can all do our jobs from anywhere (coffee shop, pub, home) on any device we want to use. In reality, most companies do not work this way and do not want to work this way. For a lot of companies, Office 365 solves the problem of not requiring infrastructure, complicated exchange deployments and HA/DR as data is now in the cloud so is not the IT department’s problem.
The ‘Anytime and Anywhere Access to Office 365’ does, however, highlight the following security concerns for Office 365 deployed with ‘out of the box’ settings.
From a data loss prevention point of view, this causes the following issues:
The old solution to these issues with on-premise environments used to be VPNs. VPNs control who can and cannot connect to on-premise data. However, once we start moving data/resources into the cloud, we need to implement different solutions to control access to our data.
Microsoft introduced Conditional Access to resolve this problem. Conditional Access allows administrators to control what Office 365 apps users can gain access to based on if they pass/fail certain conditions.
The following conditions can be controlled by the policy:
Based on the conditions above, access can be allowed to Office 365 with the following conditions:
The majority of requests for lock down of Office 365 are as follows:
The answer to these security questions is yes: Azure offers Conditional Access to lock down Office 365. However, as with most things in life, it will cost you a bit extra. For this additional service, each user will need an Azure AD Premium license which also comes bundled in Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite – nothing comes for free.
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup a policy to ensure users are only able to access the Microsoft 365 system if they have multifactor authentication setup for there account .
1. Sign In to Entra ID Portal:
– Go to the Azure portal: https://entra.microsoft.com/
– Sign in with an account that has administrative privileges.
2.Navigate to Protection:
– In the left-hand menu, click on “Protection”.
3. Conditional Access:
– In the Under the protection menu, select “Conditional Access”.
4. New Policy:
– Select “New policy from Template”
5. Secure Foundation:
– Select “Secure Foundation” from top menu
6. Require multifactor authentication for all users:
– Select “Require multifactor authentication for all users” from the items below
7. Adjust Policy state and save:
– Set policy name as per your requirements eg “CA01 – Require multifactor Authentication for all users”
– Set policy state based on your requirements
– Save the policy once you are happy with the settings.
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional security to ensure users are only able to access the Microsoft 365 system from there country, and block access to all other countries.
1. Sign In to Entra ID Portal:
– Go to the Azure portal: https://entra.microsoft.com/
– Sign in with an account that has administrative privileges.
2.Navigate to Protection:
– In the left-hand menu, click on “Protection”.
3. Conditional Access:
– In the Under the protection menu, select “Conditional Access”.
4. Named Locations:
– Once in the conditional access main menu, select “named locations”
5.Navigate to Countries location:
– In the top menu, click on “Countries location”.
6. Country Selection:
– Enter the name ” Approved Countries”
– In the right hand menu, select the countries where your offices are located.
6. Save Selection:
– Save your selection by selecting “create”.
7. Create policy:
– Select “New Policy” from the top menu.
8. Name Policy :
– Set name of policy eg”CA02 – Block Access from Other Countries”.
9. Users to affect :
– In the “Users” menu, set the include sub menu to “all users”.
10. Exclude admin account :
– To ensure you are never locked out of your Microsoft 365 tenant, select the sub menu “exclude” then select your administrator account .
11. Client Apps
– Select Client apps.
– Set configure to yes
– De-select “Exchange ActiveSync Clients” & “Other Clients”
12. Set Filter for devices :
– Select the “Filter for devices” menu
– Select yes on the “Configure” Menu on the right hand side.
– Select “exclude filtered devices from policy” under configure
– Set property to “IsCompliant”
– Set Operator to “equals”
– Set Value to “True”
– Then select Done
13. Block Access
– Select “Grant” Menu item on left hand side
– Select “block access on right hand side”
– Set “Enable policy” to “on”
Once the policy is created, test it by attempting to log in from a location outside Australia (e.g., using a VPN) to ensure the restriction is functioning properly.
You can also monitor the policy’s effectiveness through the Sign-in logs within the Azure AD portal under Monitoring > Sign-ins.
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional security to ensure users are only able to access the Microsoft 365 system from specific device types, and block access from un-approved device types.
1 – Select “Policy’s” from the conditional Access Control Panel
2 – Select “New Policy” from top menu
3 – Name policy “CA03 – Block un-approved Device types”
4 – Select “Users” Menu and then select “All users”
5 – Select “Target Resources” then select “All Cloud Apps”
6 – Select “Conditions” and the “Device Platforms”
7 – set Configure to “yes” and then tick “Windows Phone” & “Linux”
8 – Select “done”
9 – Select “Grant” from left hand menu and then set to “Block Access”, click “select” from the bottom.
10 – Set policy to “on”
11 – Select “Create”
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional security to ensure when users close a browser on a non-managed pc, the session will be logged out from Microsoft 365. Conditional Access
1 – Select “New Policy”
2 – Name the policy “CA04 – Disable Persistent Browser sessions”
3 – Select “users” from right hand menu and then select “all users”
4 – Select “Target Resources” then select “All Cloud Apps”
5 – Select “Conditions” from left hand menu
6 – Select “Client Apps” from middle menu
7 – Set configure to “yes” and then tick “Browser”, then select “done”
8 – Select “Session” from right hand side menu, then tick “Persistent Browser Session”. Then set the drop down menu to “Never Persistent”
9 – Click “Select”
10 – Set Policy to “On” and then click “Create”
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional policy to ensure that client devices are using an App Prptection Policy when accessing your corpoate data.
1 – Select “New Policy”
2 – Name the policy “CA05 – Require App Proteciton Policy”
3 – Select “users” from right hand menu and then select “all users”
4 – Select “Target Resources” then click “Select Apps”
5 – Click “Select” from the menu items
6 – On the right hand menu tick “Office 365” the “select”
7 – Select “Conditions” from right hand side menu, then select “Device Platform”. Then set the right hand side menu configure option to “yes”
8 – Tick “Android” and “IOS” from the options. The click “Done”
9 – Select “Client Apps from the middle menu
10 – Set Configure on right hand side menu to “yes”, then click “browser” and “Mobile Apps and Desktop Clients”
select “done”
11 – Select “Grant Access” from left hand menu, then select ” Require App protection Policy” from right hand side. Then click “Select”
12 – Set policy to “on” and the click “Create”
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional policy to block older protocals being being able to access your Microsoft 365 tenant.
1 – Select “New Policy from Template”
2 – Select “Block Legacy Authentication”
3 – Name the policy “CA06 – Block Legacy Authentication”
4 – Set Policy state to “on”
5 – Click on Create
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional policy to enforce Multifactor authentication when users are joining device .
1 – Select “New Policy”
2 – Name the policy “CA07 – Require MFA to Join to Entra”
3 – Select “users” from right hand menu and then select “all users”
4 – Select “Target Resources” then click the drop down menu, Select the “user actions” option.
then tick “register or Join devices ”
5 – Select “Grant” from the left hand menu, then select “grant access” from hand hand menu
6 – Tick “require multifactor Authentication” then “select”
7 – Set policy to “on” and then click “create”
Conditional Access
In this example, we have setup additional conditional access policy to block access to the Microsoft 365 system from personal computers.
1 – Select “New Policy”
2 – Name the policy “CA08 – Block Peroneal Devices”
3 – Select “users” from right hand menu and then select “all users”
4 – Select the “Exclude” menu, select “users and groups”, enter your admin account.
5 – Select “Target Resources” and select “all cloud apps”.
6 – Select “Conditions” menu, then select “device platforms”. Select “Yes” under the configure option on the right hand side. Then tick “Windows” and “macOS”. Select “done”
7 – Select “Client apps”, set configure to “yes”, tick “browser”, “mobile apps and desktop clients”, “exchange Active Sync clients” and “other clients”
8 – Select “Filter for devices”. Set to “yes” under configure.
set the expressions to
device ownership – equals – personal
or – deviceownership – not equals – company
select “done”
9 – Select “Grant”, select “Block Access” on right hand side. Click “select”
10 – Set Enable policy to “report only”
11 – Review and enable once settings are confirmed
Conditional Access
For this example, we have restricted access so that users can only connect to Office 365 if they are coming from the corporate IP range (external).
The following Settings were configured in Azure Conditional Access.
Block access to Exchange Online based on location.
The following screen details the end user experience for a user accessing Office 365 from a device that is not coming from the corporate IP address.
User logs into Office 365 with credentials.
Azure Conditional Access identifies that the user is not coming from a trusted IP address and blocks access.
As with most Microsoft solutions, Conditional Access is not without its flaws.
Conditional Access will not work in the following situations:
If your organisation is thinking about your IT security, and how it can be improved, why not book a Security Workshop from TSIT? Our experts will assess and review your current security landscape, helping you to address and solve challenges, optimising the security of your IT and helping you comply with industry standards and regulations.
Our comprehensive overview will give you the knowledge and insight you need to create an IT security strategy that fits your business needs and helps you to be completely secure using tools like Microsoft Security and Microsoft 365 to stay agile.
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