Category: Security

Transitioning to Azure cloud authentication – Part 2

Conditional Access

Now that we’ve gone over some a couple basics, I wanted to go through some of the features Azure AD has built in which not only blow on-premise AD away, but also show why a push to utilize it over it’s predecessor is vital for the modern workspace.

The modern security perimeter now extends beyond an organization’s network to include user and device identity. Organizations can use identity-driven signals as part of their access control decisions.

Conditional Access brings signals together, to make decisions, and enforce organizational policies. Azure AD Conditional Access is at the heart of the new identity-driven control plane.

I’ve especially seen post-Covid, with the workspace being more dispersed, the two goals I see most commonly requested are to:

  • Empower users to be productive wherever and whenever
  • Protect the organization’s assets

In my opinion, using Azure AD Conditional Access policies to apply the right access controls when needed is one of the strongest controls available for keeping the organization secure.

Signals that Conditional Access can use when making decisions include:

  • User or group memberships
    • Note: Dynamic memberships are super powerful here, drastically lowering the support overhead with utilizing this control!
  • IP Location info
  • Specific Device
  • Based on application
  • A.I. – like, by using real-time and calculated risk detection
    • Note: This one is cool, as integration with AzAD Identity Protection allows the identity of risky sign-in behavior, and you can then force users to go through some of the options talked about in Part 1

Conditional Access is very powerful, however, I would recommend that it initially be implemented in “report only” mode. – Thankfully, for many obvious reasons, an excellent option.

Entitlement Management

Continuing in the same theme, either static, or automatic assignments of access packages can be created in Entitlement Management, which now include multi-stage reviews.

Access reviews can be built in sequential stages, each with their own set of reviewers and configurations, making it easy to design more efficient reviews for the resource owners and auditors by reducing the number of decisions each reviewer is accountable for.

Note: In the following sample, I have a third party application added as “Application”, the reason it shows up is because it is an Enterprise App registered in my Azure tenant, one can only imagine the possibilities here!

Up to three stages can be specified, in addition, you can define whether earlier stage decisions should be revealed to later-stage reviewers. 

Automatic assignment of access policies

Azure AD now adds and removes users’ access across groups, Teams, SharePoint sites, and applications as their attributes change (such as when someone joins, moves between departments, etc.). The inclusion of this policy in an access package simplifies managing at scale; users don’t need to make requests, which not only ensures their access doesn’t remain longer than necessary, but also does so without the need for administrative interaction when someone moves teams.

Here’s a screenshot example for a policy I’ve got

In this example, the rule is based on the attributes of the user, in this case department. Azure AD will automatically begin creating resource assignments for those users who meet the rule, without the need to request.

In addition to what be done with dynamic groups, we can also use entitlement management with automatic assignment policies for:

  • Managing access across multiple resources, including applications, SharePoint Online sites, existing Azure AD groups and Teams, and groups that are provisioned to on-premises AD.
  • Managing access with a combination of policies to have both rules (for instance, members in a department) and exceptions so that the exceptions can be regularly reviewed and removed, if no longer needed
  • More automation of tasks across applications through entitlement management’s custom extensions, by running workflows when users receive or lose assignments

Cybersecurity Architect Expert certification

This weekend I successfully passed the SC-100 certification, with it have now achieved my second Expert level cert, the Cybersecurity Architect certification from Microsoft.

Learned a ton, and looking at the exam score, I overstudied on governance, but that’s what I’m interested in, and yes, it’s helped a ton with furthering my knowledge with Azure security infrastructure and design!

Transitioning to Azure cloud authentication – Part 1

This series of articles is to document steps to be taken to transition from an on-premise Active Directory footprint, and migrate the workloads to Azure AD.

A typical migration has the following stages:

  • Discovery: Find out what is currently in the environment
  • Pilot: Deploy new cloud capabilities to a small subset of users, applications, and devices
  • Scale Out: Expand the pilot to complete the transition
  • Cut-over: Stop using the on-premises authentication

Users and Groups

Microsoft highly recommends a passwordless environment, due to as is depicted in the following graphic, is both highly secure, and convenient.

In my experience, users correctly following secure practices either make or break security initiatives, thus, in my opinion, convenience is crucial

Industry authentication standards rely on one of the following:

  • Something you Know:
    • Passwords are great, but unless a vault is used, it is common to use the same, or variation for many personal accounts. Highly vulnerable in modern times, as environments are often compromised, with credentials getting exposed to public sites. The equivalent of writing credentials down on paper and other people finding it.
  • Something you Have:
    • Removes the problem of forgetting something you know, but is vulnerable to the object being lost or stolen.
  • Something you Are:
    • Much harder to lose a fingerprint than a wallet, however, while this is getting better, historically, biometric sensors can be fairly expensive (cost and support) and have accuracy issues.

Due to the fact each authentication methods have their vulnerabilities, a combination of them is much stronger, hence the modern term “Multi-Factor Authentication” (MFA)

Here’s an example of using the Authenticator App as a convenient multi-factor authentication option in addition to a password.

The Authenticator App turns any iOS or Android phone into a strong, passwordless credential. Users can sign in to any platform or browser by getting a notification to their phone, matching a number displayed on the screen to the one on their phone, and then using their biometric (touch or face) or PIN to confirm.

Passwordless authentication using the Authenticator app follows the same basic pattern as Windows Hello for Business. It’s a little more complicated as the user needs to be identified so that Azure AD can find the Authenticator app version being used:

  1. The user enters their username.
  2. Azure AD detects that the user has a strong credential and starts the Strong Credential flow.
  3. A notification is sent to the app via Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) on iOS devices, or via Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) on Android devices.
  4. The user receives the push notification and opens the app.
  5. The app calls Azure AD and receives a proof-of-presence challenge and nonce.
  6. The user completes the challenge by entering their biometric or PIN to unlock private key.
  7. The nonce is signed with the private key and sent back to Azure AD.
  8. Azure AD performs public/private key validation and returns a token.

Password Self-Service

Until an MFA environment is in place, migrating to Azure’s password self-service (SSPR) gives users the capability of managing their own password resets, which not only greatly helps with the “convenience” point I made above, but in most cases, tremendously decreases help desk support calls.

The following authentication methods are available for SSPR:

  • Mobile app notification
  • Mobile app code
  • Email
  • Mobile phone
  • Office phone (available only for tenants with paid subscriptions)
  • Security questions

Users can only reset their password if they have registered an authentication method that the administrator has enabled.

On-premises integration

With a hybrid environment, first install and configure the sync agent to be capable of enabling password writeback, once that is complete, you can configure Azure AD Connect to write password change events back from Azure AD to the on-premises directory.

In addition, the following options are available:

  1. Users can unlock accounts without resetting their password
  2. Password filters for on-premises Active Directory

Azure FQDN support for site-to-site VPN

As of November 20, 2020, Azure now supports FQDN configurations for it’s VPN connections!

This is perfect for customer branches or locations without static public IP addresses (private homes behind a cable modem, etc.) to connect to the Azure VPN gateways. Dynamic DNS services can be leveraged to use the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) instead of IP addresses!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-howto-site-to-site-resource-manager-portal#LocalNetworkGateway

Serious vulnerability in Cisco IOS

Jeremy Kirk at Databreach just wrote about a serious vulnerability found on nearly all of Cisco’s IOS devices (Including ASA’s). The vulnerability named Thangrycat requires a good amount of effort to patch the affected hardware, although at the moment, its saving grace is that the attach requires the  “local attacker” to be authenticated in order to write a modified firmware image to the component.

Not all gloom and doom, but a significant find!