Mecken Swyter

One of the first things organizations do once they upgrade to a M365 license type that includes Microsoft Entra ID P1 is to start rolling out Conditional Access Polices to incorporate fine-grained security polices. However, after that, an attractive feature, especially for organizations with a hybrid environment, is the Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) feature.

If an on-premises web application does not support modern authentication, using Microsoft Entra application proxy can be a great way to add strong authentication (MFA) to the web app. This can provide multiple benefits: Firstly, when creating an Entra application proxy app, it is assigned a service principle in the Entra tenant and can therefore be targeted by conditional access polices to enforce strong authentication before access is granted. Secondly, Microsoft Entra application proxy allows access to internal web applications without the need for an VPN or opening up any ports on the firewall.

This is a basic guide on configuring a Cisco network switch using the CLI (Command-line interface). Most of the examples provided in this guide will be performed using Cisco Packet Tracer.

To avoid losing administrative access to the Entra portal from things such as a misconfiguration of a conditional access policy (CAP), it's important to setup an emergency access (break glass) account with the Global Administrator role assigned to it. In this guide, we'll walkthrough the process of creating an emergency access account, setting up phishing resistant authentication, and setup monitoring to receive alerts when the account is used.

Using the Azure Portal to create and manage resources can be beneficial for one-off tasks and learning about different services offered in Azure; however, it becomes more practical to take advantage of a scripting language such as PowerShell for management of tasks as it allows the use of one-liner syntax, piping outputs, and scripting.