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Recommended Practices for your Hybrid Identity Admin accounts
By Sander Berkouwer as written on dirteam.com
I’ve been involved in quite some Microsoft Hybrid Identity implementations: Big and small implementations, with and without AD FS next to Azure AD Connect, with Azure AD Connect and 3rd party tooling.
One thing though, all these implementations had in common was the admin account(s) they needed done right.
You can dial a lot of knobs when implementing Hybrid Identity. One of the more important knobs is the one that turns on federated single sign-on to your organization’s on-premises Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) implementation. This particular setting is changed using the Azure Active Directory PowerShell Module.
Many early adopters of Microsoft Hybrid Identity using AD FS have already experienced a common pitfall: when you’ve converted a DNS Domain in Azure Active Directory to federated, you need AD FS to authenticate. Even to change the setting from federated back to standard.
Note: The main reason to convert from federated to standard is because there’s something wrong with the AD FS implementation…
So, how do you cope with this challenge?
Global admins and/or on-premises admins
One of the first things, prospect admins learn during training is to use separate accounts for admin purposes and day-to-day usage, like e-mail and browsing. This is based on the principle of least (administrative) privilege. The same holds true for Azure Admins:
You don’t want to assign Global Admin rights in Azure Active Directory to your day-to-day account.
In most on-premises environments, admin accounts are prefixed with adm in their username or postfixed with a number. The latter number strategy allows for a quick overview of the impact of an account; when 1 represents print admin or account operator rights and 9 represents both on-premises Enterprise Admin and Azure Global Admin, the number quickly indicates how much impact deleting the account might have or what account to use for a specific task.
However, there is a dark side to this practice: a person with malicious intent, might quickly target accounts of the most interest.
Admin roles in Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory offers the following administrator roles
These roles can be the basis for number postfixing your Azure Active Directory admins.
Note: For Azure Resource Management (ARM)-based resources, you can additionally add your own Roles-based Access Control (RBAC) for finer-grained access management. While the users and groups would live in Azure Active Directory, none of the Azure Active Directory resources, themselves, are ARM-based, momentarily.
Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management
Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management (PIM) allows for non-permanent and more granular just-in-time admin roles. Auditing and reporting allows for insights on the actual usage of administrative privilege and accounts that no longer need administrative privileges. By acting on these insights, the attack surface of privileged accounts is minimalized
Multi-factor Authentication
Authentication is the process of confirming the truth of an attribute of an entity – in short, confirming its identity. The most common attribute checked to confirm the identity of the person signing in with a user account (object) in networking environments is the password attribute. The password attribute is a value that the person sets. It is something the person (can prove he/she) knows. To make authentication more reliable and, thus, confirm the identity without a doubt, multiple authentication factors may be combined. For instance, something the person (can prove he/she) has in physical possession and/or something the person (can prove he/she) is are authentication factors that can be used for Multi-Factor Authentication beyond mere password validation.
Microsoft offers free Multi-Factor Authentication for Global Admins in Azure Active Directory. This solution offers reliable authentication for these accounts.
Note: Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Admins is only free, when Azure Active Directory has not yet been configured with a consumption-based license (pey-per-authentication) for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication.
It is highly recommended to enable multi-factor authentication on each account that has the Global Administrator role assigned in Azure Active Directory. If your organization, utilizes other admin roles (either the pre-defined roles, Azure AD PIM roles and/or Azure ARM RBAC) MFA could be applied according to the combination of (some sort of) classification of the administrative privilege(s) and day-to-day burden.
For instance, you may decide not to enforce MFA for logins for User management administrators, as their privileges are not as high-impact as other privileges and these people may need to use their privileges often.
From a technical perspective, the tooling used, needs to support modern authentication. If you want to use multi-factor authentication for admin purposes, you will need to use at least the following versions of the admin tools:
Version 8362.1 of the Azure Active Directory PowerShell Module (released January 19, 2015)
Version 1.1.105.0 of Azure AD Connect (released February 2016)
The curse of the Microsoft Account
With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Account. This account, formerly known as a Windows Live ID, can be used to log onto Windows devices ever since or provide single sign-on to consumer-based Microsoft services when logged on with a domain account (Windows Store, Cortana, etc.). The functionality is called the Connected Accounts feature. This was Microsoft’s solution to bridging the work-life divide. However, Microsoft accounts are not company-owned, but personally-owned.
Microsoft Accounts can also be used in Azure Active Directory. They can even be assigned admin roles (although some limitations apply).
You should really need to decide whether you want to assign roles to accounts your organization does not own and/or manage.
I feel strongly, that admin accounts with e-mail addresses like bigmomma50@live.com are not that professional. When hiring a consultant, this kind of administrative practices might lead to some raised eyebrows.
To add to injury, several display and sign-in problems occur when admins use Microsoft Accounts with the same domain part (everything after the @-sign) as your organization does.
There are two ways to create an Azure Active Directory directory:
1.The Azure route
2.The Office365 route
Azure tenant names, created by default, when the Azure tenant is created from a Microsoft account might raise the same eyebrows: For the joshaarbos@outlook.com Microsoft account you’ll end up with the joshaarbosoutlook.onmicrosoft.com tenant name. Again, think of when the person of the named account leaves, the tenant name will leave a permanent mark on the organization.
Note: When you take the Office365 route to create the Azure Active Directory tenant, the tenant name for Azure Active Directory is the same as the tenant name for Office365. This name is defined when you create the Office365 tenant.
To sync or not to sync admin accounts
In line with the principle of least administrative effort, you might not even want to assign Azure admin privileges to on-premises admin accounts, that are synchronized to Azure Active Directory.
Although this might result in a situation where an admin person needs to use six accounts, instead of having the benefit of single sign-on, like everyone else, it does provide a separation of administrative privileges and fault domains…
How to name these accounts? AdminHansWorst6@joshaarbosoutlook.onmicrosoft.com might not look very sexy and might possibly cause RSI, it does the job for a privileged account that is assigned the Service Administrator role in Azure Active Directory. A separate (default) vanity UPN Suffix might become a requirement when the person to which the original Microsoft account belongs, leaves the organization.
Note: Don’t forget to add other Global Admins and remove the original Microsoft Account from the Global Administrator role and/or your Azure directory.
To federate or not to federate admin accounts
When synchronizing accounts. another big question remains: To federate admin accounts, or not.
In my opinion, federation offers benefits for everyone. However, I don’t feel that strongly for admin accounts. Password Synchronization using Azure AD Connect offers a solution that is equally beneficial for admins, yet provides an exit strategy for when the on-premises Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) implementation fails.
Since federation in Azure Active Directory is governed using DNS domains, a quick and dirty way of removing admin accounts from the scope of federation is by assigning a separate userPrincipalName (UPN) Suffix to admin accounts on-premises. For instance yourorganizationsadmins.com can be used for admins, while yourorganization.com is used for the day-to-day user accounts.
Converting child and parent domains
One of the reasons why I choose yourorganizationsadmins.com in the above example is because this introduces an entirely new DNS Domain, instead of a subdomain.
While you can use subdomains for your admin accounts, it is not recommended: When converting domains in Azure Active Directory (from standard to federated, and vice versa), by default, all subdomains will be converted too.
Note: The way around this, although unsupported, is to place the parent domain and the child domain in different Azure tenants.
Concluding
Use these recommended practices for Azure Admins in Hybrid Identity scenarios:
-
Separate admin privileges from day-to-day accounts
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Deploy Multi-factor Authentication
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Deploy Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
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Use admin account and password synchronization for your convenience
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Don’t use Microsoft Accounts
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Don’t federate admin accounts
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Assign admin accounts a separate UPN Suffix on-premises and/or in Azure AD
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Outlook 2016 Quick Start Guide
New to Outlook 2016 or upgrading from a previous version? Use this guide to learn the basics. Helpful tips and tricks including:
1. Organizing your mail
2. Switching between views
3. Setting your preferences
And more!
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Microsoft's BizSpark helping start-ups, like Pose-a-Pet, reach their goals
Jennifer Whaley, founder and CEO of Pose A Pet™, stumbled onto her startup idea several years after she began volunteering to take pictures of homeless pets at animal rescue operations in an effort find them forever homes more quickly. Great pictures get animals adopted, she says. Even better? A PaaS like Microsoft Azure gives a startup the boost it needs to go worldwide.
Whaley’s idea to help homeless pets become more adoptable through charming, uniquely personable photos for rescue ads was helping to get more animals adopted more quickly, but the number of animals that she could help was limited by the number of hours in the day. She took pictures using a necklace of squeaky, distinctive sounds that captured a pet’s attention.
The noises captured the shots she wanted but, in her heart, she knew there had to be a faster and more efficient way to bring her photo-taking tools to the masses and distribute them out so that more animals would be adopted quickly. As she worked out the details of Pose A Pet™, she networked with other startups.
When another small pet business told her about the benefits of the Microsoft BizSpark program, Whaley was interested in learning more.
As she tells it, “It truly hit us that we were a real startup when we became a part of the BizSpark program. When we found out that everything we needed was available to us (Ed. Note: Visual Studio, Exchange, Azure, SQL, SharePoint, etc.) to develop the kind of apps we envisioned, we knew we had a chance.”
Jeff Everett, co-founder and CTO, manages the technology side of the business. Through BizSpark, Pose a Pet™ now uses Microsoft Azure to house all its images, create animal rescue flyers, add sponsors and helps create marketing campaigns for animal rescues worldwide, among other things.
Even more important, Microsoft Azure is available and scalable to Pose A Pet’s™ needs as it continues to expand worldwide. Azure’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) allow developers to focus on building differentiating scenarios and features rather than rebuilding infrastructure.
PaaS was perfect for Pose A Pet™, says Everett. The Microsoft Azure platform provides a cloud services operating system and a set of services to support easy development and operation of applications for the platform. One OSS platform the company is currently evaluating for use within Azure is Concrete 5. Everett says that will help wrangle in the many contacts the startup has for rescues, TV stations, radio stations, etc.
“We love the flexible nature it provides that our developers need and have been asking us for so they can use it for their contacts.”
Because Pose A Pet™ is dealing with multiple software versions as well as a collaborative workspace, the company uses Git Repository to make sure all the versions are properly cataloged through the Feature Based Workflow.
“That gives us frictionless context switching,” says Everett, “so we can go forward with a revision, commit a few times, head back to where we branched from and apply patching where necessary in order to make our final project stable while developing other ideas in parallel.”
“Azure’s Platform as a Service provides significant cost reduction in the development, deployment and hosting of business applications due to the fact that you pay only for what you use,” adds Everett. “The ever-increasing and limitless computing resources of PaaS also give us a major competitive edge over our competitors because if we need more resources or servers, we can have them up in minutes rather than the time required at traditional in-house data centers.”
Because of all the services Azure has to offer, Pose A Pet™ easily built a back-end engine to create shareable flyers in bulk for automated sends; each animal rescue flyer has a link to a business that sponsors an individual animal, which are then shared all over social media.
“We got excited about Microsoft Azure when we realized that the process was much more automated that we expected,” he says. “The most exciting thing for us is the ability to scale. We know we will be housing thousands of images and moving a large amount of data around in the future. Keeping all that in one place on a single platform like Azure makes things straightforward. And that leaves time for us to plan for growth through development.”
“With Azure, we just save so much time for ourselves and the work we enjoy doing,” he says. “And the ability to scale through cost is beautiful. It’s easy to get all kinds of apps to communicate with the server. For example, we use a lot of Java and will be employing more open source software packages like Ruby on Rails as we grow and customize. That’s a huge benefit of Azure – that we can deploy OSS on it.”
Pose A Pet™ has iPad and Android apps now (Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps coming soon) that use proven attention grabbing sounds from Whaley’s necklace as a picture is being taken. The sounds in the app help the pet focus directly on the camera, which improves each picture taken. For those involved in animal rescue you can create a virtual flyer that can be instantly shared on their social media networks. The app will be available through the Windows Store soon stay tuned.
For anyone considering adopting a pet, Whaley has some valuable advice.
“Be sure you have the space, time and energy for a pet. Then find a local breed rescue or animal shelter and take things from there. Many people don’t realize that you don’t even have to open your home or even your pocketbook to help animal rescue. Visit your local animal shelter’s site today to find out how you can help homeless animals in your community!”
Microsoft is helping these startups succeed through its BizSpark program.
About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that’s $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Linux, Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.
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Technical Support Specialist
Overview:
Managed Solution has an all-star team with a kick-butt company culture, and we’re excited about what’s ahead. For over a decade, we’ve worked with companies large and small, supporting any and all of their IT needs. We invest in our clients and our staff to bring out the best in both. We’ve been named to the Business Journal’s 100 fastest growing companies for the past five years and stand in the top 1% of Microsoft Cloud partners worldwide. Managed Solution values high standards, honesty and integrity, proactivity, adaptability, and passion. We're poised for unparalleled growth and expansion, and we're always looking for MVPs to join our team.
Responsibilities:
As a member of the Managed Operations Center, the Technical Support Specialist (Level 1) will provide entry-level technical support to managed services clients in a 24/7/365 environment, working from Managed Solution headquarters and at various client sites. He or she will be responsible for the following...
•Fielding client inquiries and providing basic application support, network administration, desktop troubleshooting.
•Adhering to client service level agreements and team performance goals as you prioritize, resolve and escalate issues in accordance with company policy.
•Communicating technical information clearly and effectively over the phone, in person, and in writing to English-speaking clients.
•Documenting client communication and resolution efforts via internal ticketing system.
•Maintaining a high degree of professionalism, confidentiality, and integrity while accessing client data/systems and supporting mission-critical environments.
•Other responsibilities as assigned.
Qualifications:
Technical Competencies:
•An Associate or Bachelor degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent combination of education and/or experience.
•Microsoft or other technical certifications a plus!
•Basic troubleshooting skills in a Windows environment, including desktop and server OS
•Fundamental awareness of LAN/WAN administration and concepts
•Entry-level proficiency in Exchange and Active Directory
•Previous exposure to virtualization technologies and ticketing systems preferred.
Relational and Problem Solving Skills:
•An outgoing, enthusiastic personality with a can-do attitude and passion for solving problems.
•Outstanding customer service skills and a drive to deliver exceptional service to both internal and external team members.
•Strong organizational and problem solving skills. Experience prioritizing multiple responsibilities in a fast paced environment.
•Excellent oral and written English communication skills.
•Integrity and the ability to maintain confidentiality.
Perks & Benefits!
•Never stop learning… stay one step ahead of the game with a company on the bleeding edge of technology.
•Be inspired by your teammates: we’re a friendly bunch who are passionate about IT.
•Get Certified - Managed Solution prepays the cost of your exams!
•Earn $$$... Competitive salary with bonus potential
•Save for the future: 401(k) retirement plan (with employer match beginning at 6 months!)
•Find balance with plenty of PTO and 7 paid holidays
•Feel great with Medical, Vision and Dental Insurance - Managed Solution covers 65% of the cost!
See all of our available positions here
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State of BYOD and Mobile Security Report: Latest Insights, Trends and Stats
The Information Security LinkedIn group released a new survey from its 200,000-member community on the state of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and mobile security initiatives in their enterprises. We provide our take on some of the findings from this comprehensive survey‘s 1,100 responses.
To BYOD or Not?
According to the survey, over 60 percent of enterprises allow or tolerate employee use of personal devices to access enterprise data. Only a small minority of enterprises, 11 percent, have no plans to allow such usage. Enterprises that allow BYOD expect the primary benefits to be improved employee productivity and satisfaction and better overall security, and 58 percent expect related budgets to increase or stay flat.
Our Take: Device ownership is destined to become a nonissue, and IT organizations must adopt new capabilities to secure enterprise applications and data on a shared personal or corporate data device. Enterprises are embracing BYOD programs as an opportunity to invest in the secure productivity of their employees as opposed to a “cost of doing business.” Securing corporate data without making assumptions on device security makes enterprises less complacent and more rigorous in assessing and addressing security risks.
Enable Flexible Data Access
According to the survey, email access allowance is still king at 86 percent of responses, followed by access to documents, custom mobile applications and cloud services. Overall, structured data in enterprise databases is still deemed most valuable, with unstructured data a close second.
Our Take: Our devices enable access to critical enterprise resources. Sensitive data and transactions are accessed, stored locally and exchanged not only with data center apps, but also third-party services. BYOD enables a “personal” device image, but enterprises must take steps to secure local app execution, encrypt enterprise data where applicable and detect access and transactional risk.
Data Loss Doesn’t Equal Device Loss
The biggest mobile security risk, according to the survey, is losing enterprise data. In essence, the risk categories can be divided into three main areas: data (stolen, lost, unauthorized access), threat (fake apps, malware, exploits) and management (endpoint security, regulatory compliance).
Our Take: Enterprises must address each of these three dimensions through a holistic framework. Many enterprises have made progress on addressing the “lost device” scenario and data-loss risk with enterprise mobility management suites that enable a remote wipe of enterprise data from mobile devices. However, securing devices against compromise has a long way to go; this is partly due to the restrictions enforced by mobile OS vendors on the security community, which limits the ability to secure mobile platforms.
Mobility Impact: Tools and Resources
Enterprises are investing in resources (mostly security personnel) and tools (mobile device management and endpoint security solutions) to address the emerging mobile threats.
Our Take: Enterprises are taking steps to reduce mobile-related security risks. To minimize the burden, such resource allocation should occur in the context of a comprehensive plan that addresses enterprise-specific risk factors. For example, banks that provide online banking services to customers must address transactional risk from both laptops and mobile devices that they have absolutely no control over. Malware and phishing risks that are common to that environment should be assessed when new capabilities are rolled out (e.g., remote deposit capture).
Reducing Attack Surface: Beyond the Basics
Simple steps are the easiest to implement. Most enterprises require password protection to devices accessing enterprise data; this will deter the occasional thief but is probably no match for a focused adversary. Encryption and remote wipe provide additional layers of security.
Our Take: While these measures are a good start, security should be embedded in the enterprise mobility initiatives. For example, secure development practices and mobile penetration testing will reduce vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malware, thus reducing the attack surface. While the malware threat has quickly grown, its capabilities have slowly evolved on mobile devices. Recent developments should drive security teams to reassess the threat and the possible impact of credential loss on their enterprise security.
Summary
The survey shows enterprises’ increasing readiness to embrace BYOD programs. Enterprises are making investments in people and tools to manage the key risks to enterprise resources (applications and data), driven by mixing corporate and personal data and the evolving threat landscape. The business rationale for these investments is boosting employee productivity while improving security as a broader set of risks is taken into consideration; this is a no-brainer since we expect BYOD to become table stakes for virtually all enterprises in the next few years. Given the utility and importance of mobile devices to employees’ personal and work lives, this looks like a sound investment.
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OneNote 2016 Quick Start Guide
New to OneNote 2016 or upgrading from a previous version? Use this guide to learn the basics. Become an expert in:
1. Accessing your work across all devices
2. Organizing information tables
3. Creating wiki-style hyperlinks
4. Copying text from pictures
5. Sharing your notebooks with others>/h5>
And much more!
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Take your OneNote Class Notebooks wherever you go with the new “Save a copy” feature
As OneNote Class Notebooks become more popular, we’re often asked how a student or teacher can take their digital books with them when leaving school. Students graduate or change schools and would like to be able to bring the portfolio of work with them. Teachers change schools or take on a new role and also want to keep their Class Notebooks. Based on talking to lots of teachers and students, we launched the new “Save a copy” feature for Class Notebooks.
To see how this works, just follow these simple steps:
1.Sign in to OneNote Online, our web version of OneNote.
2.From the Notebook list, click Class Notebooks to display all your Class Notebooks.
3.Right-click to select a Class Notebook and then select Save a copy.
4.Click Next. You are prompted to sign in to a consumer Microsoft account. If you don’t have one, go here http://www.live.com to sign up.
That’s it! Your OneNote Class Notebook is copied to the consumer OneDrive and is available for you to use elsewhere.
This is just the initial rollout of the Save a copy feature. In the near future, we will add the ability to choose any notebook type, not just Class Notebooks. We will also roll out the Save a copy feature to your own OneDrive for Business, which will allow students to save a copy of their Class Notebook from a teacher’s OneDrive for Business to their own OneDrive for Business.
As usual, reach out on Twitter at @OneNoteEDU with questions or send us an email at ClassNotebook@onenote.uservoice.com.
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Plug in to success—7 steps for a strategic technology lifecycle
Take a minute to think about the applications you use, the programs you depend on and the technologies you’ve integrated into your business. Now ask yourself these questions: If a specific application supported my company in the past, how is it benefiting me now? Are our programs performing in line with our desired standard? What, if anything, am I doing to ensure my technology is not outdated? Is my vendor providing me with resources to manage my applications? Am I really getting the maximum business value from these solutions?
To answer these questions, many enterprise scale organizations use established processes to manage their technology. A technology lifecycle—or TLC—offers a systematic approach for assessing the state of your technologies. Thankfully, this indispensable method applies to both enterprise scale organizations and small and midsize businesses. So whether you’re an experienced IT professional or a technological tenderfoot, considering your TLC will yield promising, practical results.
TLC, defined.
Start:
Introduce yourself to the product’s benefits, programs, services and content. What’s new with the product? Who else is using it? How does it benefit them? From training resources to accessibility tools, analyzing your products’ perks in the early stages of implementation will drastically influence your business practices later on.
Decide:
Select the best product for your business. Evaluate the product to confirm its alignment with your business’s goals. Think about both your current and future needs. Is the product secure and compliant? Will the product scale with future growth? Can you connect with current product users? Is there ongoing support and training for the product? What does the future product roadmap look like? If you choose a product that is cost-effective, yet lacks specific market advantages, you may find yourself trailing behind your competitors.
Deploy:
Connect with the product’s customer services, including any deployment assistance programs, step-by-step setup guidance or visual assets. These documents will serve as a roadmap for the successful implementation of your product. Consider your strategies for product-integration. How do you plan for successful deployment and adoption? Can you find demos and guidance? What are the considerations for the businesses most like yours in similar industries, at similar size and with similar business objectives?
Manage:
Discover best practices for a successful product launch using an integrated admin console or alternative resources. How do you configure the product? How do you manage or administrate it? Are management and administration tools provided? How should you prepare for change and incidents? How can you assure your data is secure and company policies are being met? Researching practical ways for communicating the new product to employees will result in informed, confident and empowered users.
Develop:
Configure and customize the product and integrate it within your company. Develop new and extend existing features and functionalities. Connect the product with line of business applications. Is development guidance provided? Are there opportunities to learn about best practices and see how the product is being modified to solve real business goals? Budget time for aligning your company’s goals and interests with the product, choosing internal applications that further the interest of your organization.
Support:
Retain critical support contacts and information to resolve issues with your deployment and management of the product. Consider live support options including in-person, phone or chat. These options should be balanced by online troubleshooting and guidance. Is there a broad set of support options to help me address a range of potential issues? Do you get appropriate and timely notifications? Can you plan for known issues and quickly get unanticipated issues addressed?
Use:
Secure the best possible experience with your new technology for you and your end users. Invest in a product with training and adoption options designed specifically to encourage you and your company to further your understanding as you advance with your new technology. Learning how to manage and sustain the product is important for anyone in an IT or administrator role. Similarly, learning is critical for ensuring your end users get the most from your technology investments. Effective product usage can positively impact your business.
Untangle your business, simplify your mind
When assessing technology’s impact, Microsoft has committed to the TLC. In fact, Microsoft’s whole Office Suite is TLC–compatible, offering services, check-ins and pertinent information that might otherwise be unavailable to businesses. Though a technology lifecycle may be just one of the many factors a business-owner or IT professional considers when implementing new technologies in the workplace, the importance of securing quality products with strong business and support services that match your business’s needs cannot be stressed enough.
Rest assured by investing in your business, and thrive on your future success.
