Multi-Factor Authentication

Azure multi-factor authentication (MFA) cheat sheet.

3rd of June, 2016 / Lucian Franghiu / 23 Comments

Last year I had the pleasure of possibly being one of the first in Australia to tinker with Azure multi-factor authentication tied into Office 365 and Office when ADAL was in private preview. That was a great proof of concept project at the time.

I’m currently working on a solution for a client that’s selecting from one of the Azure MFA options: either Azure MFA Cloud, Azure MFA Server or enabling certificate or token MFA strictly on AD FS 3.0 (the latter is what I had used last year in that private preview proof of concept project at Staples Australia).

Today I want to share two tables that outline information that I brought together from various Azure documentation pages and Office 365 documentation pages to review for the client that I’m working on an Azure MFA solution at the moment. In working out what the imperatives / inputs / requirements for the solution, I found it easier to put everything into a table to visually see what options I could look to for this solution.

Azure MFA Server – International Deployment

1st of July, 2015 / Mark Southwell / 2 Comments

Hi all – this blog will cover off some information to assist with multilingual/international deployment of Azure MFA server. There are some nuances of the product that make ongoing management of language preferences a little challenging. Also some MFA Methods are preferable to others in international scenarios due to carrier variances.

Language Preferences

Ideally when a user is on-boarded, their language preferences for the various MFA Methods should be configured to their native language. This can easily be achieved using MFA Server, however there are some things to know:

Language settings are defined in in Synchronisation Items.

… [Keep reading]

How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS, Part 5, the finale!

10th of April, 2015 / Lucian Franghiu / 10 Comments

Originally posted in Lucians blog over @ lucian.blog.

I know what you’re thinking: does Lucian really have to create another part in this long MFA series? In short, probably not, but I’ll have saved your index finger the thousands of years or scrolling you would have done to read the entire brain dump in a one page post.

So to explain this ‘epilogue’, if you will, on MFA, using X.509 SSLs for your second factor of authentication is a powerful means to automate and manage a process for your mobile and external users. This blog post will explain how to leverage an on-prem Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 R2 deployment linked to Microsoft InTune to deliver SSL’s to mobile and external devices to use in MFA.

How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 4

10th of April, 2015 / Lucian Franghiu / 2 Comments

Originally posted in Lucians blog over @ lucian.blog.

The final installment in the long series that’s taken me allot longer to get around to writing then initially I had thought. However, I hope it’s worth the wait and the solution that has been proven works well for you. Before I get into the technical aspects of the final piece of this MFA implementation puzzle, I’d like to make a quick shout out to all the awesome consultants at Kloud Solutions who helped both in the technical implementation but also with the initial design and work required to see this solution through- a big thank you!

In the previous blog post I went through essentially what an internal configuration of MFA would look like with everything ready for the ADAL component that was previously under NDA and preview only availability, is now generally available for testing. So let me quickly delve into that ADAL in Office 2013 and Office 365 component before an in-depth guide on how to utilize Microsoft InTune and System Centre Configuration Manager as a means to deliver SSL certificates to users and use those certificates as your second factor of authentication! Exciting as its been a long build up to get to this point with several moments where I was questioning whether this would work in the real world.. lets start..

How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 3

20th of March, 2015 / Lucian Franghiu / 4 Comments

Originally posted on Lucian’s blog over at lucian.blog.

In this blog post I’ll go into the configuration and implementation of Active Directory Federation Services v3.0 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This is in line with a recent proof-of-concept project I conducted for a large customer in the FMCG sector. ADFSv3 MFA coupled with some new functionality that Microsoft is working on in Office 365, MFA in Office 2013 which will be covered by part 4 of this series, offers a fantastic solution to organisations wanting to leverage MFA by way of adhering to company policy or simply to further secure their users accessing Office 365 cloud services.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life

-Jane Addams

How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 2

11th of March, 2015 / Lucian Franghiu / 2 Comments

Check out the original article at Lucian’s blog here: lucian.blog

Welcome to part 2 of this 4 part series on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). In this post i’ll go into some of the different types of MFA available to federated users with either Office 365, Azure AD and hybrid configuration Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) v3.0; as well as some use cases for each of these.

Quick recap – Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a means of access control whereby during the logon process, there is more than one claim to grant you access to the cloud service, server application or even workstation. … [Keep reading] “How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 2”

How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 1

11th of March, 2015 / Lucian Franghiu / 5 Comments

Check out the original article at Lucian’s blog here: lucian.blog

This is part 1 of a 4 part series put together exploring Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Recently I’m been working with a client on a project to implement MFA for Office 365 services as company policy mandates at least two factors of authentication (2FA) for accessing any corporate resources.

In part one I’ll put together my points of view around what MFA is, why its an important topic for organizations especially in 2015.… [Keep reading] “How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication in Office 365 via ADFS – Part 1”