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Step-by-Step Guide: Azure Active Directory Password-less authentication using SMS

As we know, passwords are no longer strong. In Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (2017), it says, 81% of hacking-related breaches used either stolen or weak passwords. Multi-factor authentication can provide an extra layer of security to the sign-in process but it doesn’t eliminate the requirement for passwords.

In one of my previous blog posts, I explain how we can enable password-less authentication for Azure AD by using FIDO2 Security keys. This required additional hardware components. Apart from that method now we also can use SMS to authenticate into Azure AD. The beauty of this method is that you not even need to know your user name to log in. Your phone number will be your user name. This not only reduces the security risk; it also simplifies the complexity in the login process. This feature is still in public preview but it is not too early to test.

Prerequisites

To enable SMS based authentication, we must have the following,

1. Valid Azure Subscription
2. Azure AD Tenant
3. One of the following licenses assign to Azure AD user who going to use this feature,
• Azure AD Premium P1/P2
• Microsoft 365 (M365) F1/F3 or Office 365 F1/F3
• Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) E3/E5 or Microsoft 365 (M365) E3/E5
4. Global Administrator Account

Limitation

• SMS based authentication has the following limitations.
• This cant be used with native office applications (except teams)
• SMS based authentication is not compatible with Azure multi-factor authentication
• Can’t’ use with federation. Users only can authenticate in the cloud.

In this post I am going to demonstrate how we can enable SMS based authentication for Azure AD. In my demo setup, I have a user called Debra Berger (DebraB@M365x620957.OnMicrosoft.com). She is using Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 Licences. I am going to enable SMS-based authentication for her account.

Let’s go ahead and enable the SMS based authentication first.

1. Log in to Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com/) as a Global Administrator
2. Click on Azure Active Directory tile.

3. Then in the new window click on Security

4. In the Security page, click on Authentication methods

5. Then click on the Authentication method policy (Preview) | Text messages

6. In the new window, click on Yes under ENABLE. Then click on Select users under TARGET. After, click on Add users and groups and select Debra Berger from the list. Leave all other settings in default and click on Save to apply the settings.

[Read more…] about Step-by-Step Guide: Azure Active Directory Password-less authentication using SMS

Step-by-Step Guide to Restrict Azure AD Administration portal

In order to manage Azure AD, we use Azure Active Directory option in https://portal.azure.com. By default, any user under Azure AD can access this option event they do not have a Directory role. In my demo setup, I have a user called "Emily Braun". She doesn't have any Directory role assigned. 

Then I log in to Azure portal https://portal.azure.com as the user and then go to Azure Active Directory option. It didn't block me accessing it. 

I can go to All users and see user account details. 

I even can see the Groups memberships details. 

 

Also, can view application assignments. 

As an end user I also can see the Azure AD Connect details. 

[Read more…] about Step-by-Step Guide to Restrict Azure AD Administration portal

Step-by-Step guide to add Additional Local Administrators to Azure AD Joined Devices

I am sure every engineer knows how “Local Administrators” works in a device. If it’s a device in on-premise Active Directory environment, either domain admin or enterprise will need to add it to Administrators group. if it’s a workgroup environment, another user with local administrator privileges will need to add additional users to Administrators group. 

If it is Azure AD join device, Azure Global Administrators and Device Owner have local administrator rights by default. 

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Azure AD allow to define local administrators in device level. however, this is a global setting. If it is need to handle in device level, still you need to login from an account which already have local administrator rights and then add additional users. 

Let’s see how we can do this. 

1) Log in to azure portal as Global Administrator. 

2) Then click on Azure Active Directory and the Devices. 

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3) Then click on Device Settings

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4) By default, Additional local administrators on Azure AD joined devices setting is set to None. click on tab Selected to enable it. 

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5) In my demo, I am going to make user RA886611@therebeladmin.com local administrator for devices. To do that click on Selected option. 

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6) In new window click on Add members to add users. 

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7) From the list find the relevant user and click on it to select. Then click on Select

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8) Then click on OK

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9) Finally click on Save to apply the settings. 

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10) To Test this, I logged in to a Azure Domain Joined Device as RA886611@therebeladmin.com 

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11) Now to test it, I trying to launch PowerShell console as Administrator. If it works, I shouldn’t get login prompt. 

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12) As expected it didn’t ask for admin user name and password as logged in user now have local admin privileges. 

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13) Also, when needed, using Remove Members option in Local administrators on devices page, we can remove the users from local administrator group. 

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This marks the end of this blog post. If you have any questions feel free to contact me on rebeladm@live.com also follow me on twitter @rebeladm to get updates about new blog posts.

Manage Azure Active Directory with PowerShell – Part 01

In this series of articles, it which will explain how to use PowerShell to manage your Azure Active Directory instance. In Part 01, I am going to show how to connect with Azure AD using PowerShell and show actions of some day to day operation related commands.

In order to use PowerShell with Azure AD, first we need to install Azure Active Directory Module in local computer. there is two version of Azure active directory PowerShell module. One was made for the Public Preview and the latest one released after announces Azure AD GA. You can download module from http://connect.microsoft.com/site1164/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=59185

If you had the previous version installed, highly recommended to replace it with the new version.

Once installed let’s check its status.

Get-Module MSOnline

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In order to list down all the commands associate cmdlets with the module we can use

Get-Command -Module MSOnline

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Next step is to connect to Azure AD Instance. In order to do that we can use,

Connect-MsolService

It will prompt for the login details. Please use your Azure DC Admin account details. Please note login via Microsoft account not supported.

First, we can list down all the domain under the given subscription. To do that we can use,

Get-MsolDomain

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As next steps I like to list down all the users in Azure AD Setup.

Get-MsolUser

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It will list down all the Users in the Azure AD.

I also can search for a specific user based on text patterns. In below example I am searching users with Name which match text “Dishan”

Get-MsolUser -SearchString "Dishan"

Idea of my search is to find some object values for this user. I can combine above command to return all the object value.

Get-MsolUser -SearchString "Dishan" | Select-Object *

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Now we know what are the objects been use and I can make more unique search.

Get-MsolUser | Select-Object DisplayName,whenCreated,LastPasswordChangeTimestamp

Above command will list me all the users with Display Name, Date and Time It was created, and Date and Time of Last Password Change Action.

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Get-MsolUserRole another handy cmdlet. It can use to check the role of a user account.

Get-MsolUserRole -UserPrincipalName "dcadmin@REBELADMIN.onmicrosoft.com" | fl

The above command will find the role for the given user account.

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Get-MsolGroup cmdlet can use to list, filter Groups in the Azure AD.

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Using searchstring can search for the groups based on text patterns.

Get-MsolGroup -SearchString "AAD"

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Get-MsolGroupMember can use to list down the members in the group.

Get-MsolGroupMember -GroupObjectId "77a76005-02df-48d5-af63-91a19ed55a82"

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Remove-MsolUser cmdlet can use to remove the user object from the Azure AD. This can combine with searchstring to search for user and then remove the object same time.

Get-MsolUser -SearchString "user2" | Remove-MsolUser

Above command will search for the user object which have display name similar to user2 and then delete it.

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In next post let’s dig further in to cmdlets which can use to manage Azure AD.

If there is any question, please feel free to contact me on rebeladm@live.com

Which azure active directory edition I should buy?

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Azure active directory is responsible for providing identity service for Microsoft online service’s needs. When I talk to people about azure AD one of most common problem they ask is what version I should buy? my existing subscription will work for the features I looking for? The myth is, lot of people still thinks azure subscriptions and prices are complicated, but if you understand what each subscription can do it’s not that hard. I have seen people paying for Azure AD premium version when azure AD free version can give the features they needed for their environment and some people struggling to implement features only available for premium version using their free azure AD instance. In this blog post I am going to list down the features for each azure AD version and hope it will help you to decide the version you need for your setup.

There are 4 Azure AD editions,

1) Free

2) Basic

3) Premium P1

4) Premium P2

Free – if you subscribed to any Microsoft online service such as azure or office 365 you will get the free azure AD version. You do not need to pay for this. But it got limited features which I will explain later in this post.

Basic – Designed for task workers with cloud-first needs, this edition provides cloud centric application access and self-service identity management solutions. With the Basic edition of Azure Active Directory, you get productivity enhancing and cost reducing features like group-based access management, self-service password reset for cloud applications, and Azure Active Directory Application Proxy (to publish on-premises web applications using Azure Active Directory), all backed by an enterprise-level SLA of 99.9 percent uptime.
 
Premium P1 – Designed to empower organizations with more demanding identity and access management needs, Azure Active Directory Premium edition adds feature-rich enterprise-level identity management capabilities and enables hybrid users to seamlessly access on-premises and cloud capabilities. This edition includes everything you need for information worker and identity administrators in hybrid environments across application access, self-service identity and access management (IAM), identity protection and security in the cloud. It supports advanced administration and delegation resources like dynamic groups and self-service group management. It includes Microsoft Identity Manager (an on-premises identity and access management suite) and provides cloud write-back capabilities enabling solutions like self-service password reset for your on-premises users.
 
Premium P2 – Designed with advanced protection for all your users and administrators, this new offering includes all the capabilities in Azure AD Premium P1 as well as our new Identity Protection and Privileged Identity Management. Azure Active Directory Identity Protection leverages billions of signals to provide risk-based conditional access to your applications and critical company data. We also help you manage and protect privileged accounts with Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management so you can discover, restrict and monitor administrators and their access to resources and provide just-in-time access when needed.
 
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You can find more info about the subscriptions from 
 
if you got any question feel free to contact me on rebeladm@live.com

 
Note : Image Source https://f.ch9.ms/thumbnail/4ac52e5b-b3ac-4fbd-bbc7-bd4bae8403da.png