Having a strong security system in place to safeguard your data is more crucial than ever because cybercrime is increasing daily. Since Microsoft has always placed a high priority on cyber security, it should come as no surprise that there are a wide range of tools and features available to help create a suitable Azure architecture.
By decreasing the attack surface area, you may improve the security of your identity infrastructure, which is one method to boost security on Azure. This may be accomplished in a number of ways, each with varying degrees of complexity. There is this IT support London company, Babble, that gave their informed opinion on this matter. They say that businesses should adopt Zero Trust security principles, disable outdated, insecure protocols, restrict access entry points, increase administrative control over resource access, and switch to cloud authentication.
This article outlines all the ways your business may use Azure Active Directory’s features to improve security and decrease its attack surface area.
Use Alternative Authentication
A business should start by using cloud authentication techniques. In actuality, the main targets are usernames and passwords. A business’s greatest risk of a data breach is having weak, simple-to-guess passwords.
Password-less authentication techniques, cloud authentication, and multi-factor authentication may all greatly lower the attack surface and improve security in general. FIDO security keys, Microsoft Authentication, and Windows Hello for Business are popular authentication techniques that any reputable managed IT services London company would recommend.
Block Legacy Authentication
There is a security concern when businesses use programs like POP3, IMAP4, or SMTP clients that access business data using their own legacy authentication techniques. These applications authenticate for the user, but they really stop Azure AD from performing any complex security assessments, which is a problem. Conditional access and multi-factor authentication are best supported by modern authentication techniques.
Businesses may use Azure AD sign-in logs and Log Analytic workbooks to identify any old authentication and then set up SharePoint Online and Exchange Online to restrict it.
Block Invalid Authentication Entry Points
This is a tiny, straightforward solution that works well in its own right. You can better manage how authorised users access their applications and resources by defining particular requirements using Conditional Access on Azure AD. In essence, this examines whether networks, devices, businesses, and other aspects are permitted and blocks those that are not.
Review and Govern Admin Roles
The risk of an account (operating with excessive control) being hacked can be reduced by carefully limiting the privileges that an account can have. To guarantee that identities are assigned with the least level of authority required, businesses can use Azure AD Roles.
Additionally, in order to further isolate the accounts from any on-premises settings, Microsoft 365 consultants advise that privileged roles be cloud-only and that credentials not be stored in on-premises password vaults.
Implement Privilege Access Management
Businesses may detect excessive, unnecessary, or misused access permissions to critical resources in Azure AD, Azure, or other Microsoft Online Services like Microsoft Intune or Microsoft 365 with the aid of Privileged Identity Management (or PIM).
PIM can manage administrative roles, determine which privileged roles are unnecessary or overly privileged, set up rules requiring multi-factor authentication for privileged roles, and set up rules limiting the duration of privileged role grants to the time required to finish a privileged task.
Restrict User Consent Operations
Lastly, it is advised that businesses limit user consent for applications, allowing only approved publishers and certain permissions. Only an administrator may execute future consent operations, or in certain circumstances, an admin consent request procedure may be used to get admin consent. Only administrators should routinely check consent permissions and apps when consent operations are regulated.
