At this point, they can choose to delay for up to 14 days or opt not to use Security Defaults by amending settings in the Azure AD admin center or Microsoft 365 admin center. Beginning in late June, administrators will begin to see prompts to enable Security Defaults when they sign in. Tenant administrators will receive email notifications about the transition. Initially, they are focusing on “ customers who aren’t using Conditional Access, haven’t used security defaults before, and aren’t actively using legacy authentication clients.” It’s the same solve the problem in easy bites approach that the Exchange Online team is using to eradicate basic authentication: process the easy tenants first, then slightly harder, and gradually work through the installed base until you reach the most difficult tenants. Microsoft says that the roll-out of Azure AD Security Defaults to unprotected tenants has started. Microsoft explicitly mentions that they will target “ those who haven’t changed any security settings since deployment.”Įngage with Microsoft 365 experts like Tony Redmond at The Experts Conference 2022 in Atlanta, GA September 20-21.
![microsoft security defaults microsoft security defaults](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/surface/images/manage-surface-uefi-fig5a.png)
The focus is on extending protection to tenants that might not have the IT capabilities to implement better security practices. However, it’s the number of unprotected accounts in older tenants – many older tenants use MFA and conditional access policies already. Given Microsoft’s latest number for Office 365 users ( 345 million paid seats), that number might seem low. Microsoft says that rolling out Security Defaults to older tenants will protect 60 million additional accounts from attack.
#Microsoft security defaults password#
According to Microsoft, “ When we look at hacked accounts, more than 99.9% don’t have MFA, making them vulnerable to password spray, phishing, and password reuse.” The popularity of password spray attacks against older email connection protocols like IMAP4 and POP3 is a big reason why Exchange Online will decommission basic authentication for these protocols (and five others) starting on October 1. Microsoft says that the 30 million tenants currently protected with Security Defaults “ experience 80 percent less compromise than the overall tenant population.” Implementing MFA is a big step forward. In a May 25 post, Microsoft announced the extension of Security Defaults to protect tenants created before October 2019. Combined with conditional access policies, MFA erects a substantial barrier against account compromise. Even MFA based on SMS messages is so much better than basic authentication with username and password. In a nutshell, this means that accounts in those tenants use multi-factor authentication (MFA) unless administrators decide otherwise. In October 2019, Microsoft enabled Azure AD Security Defaults for new tenants. Which is why Azure AD Security Defaults exist.
![microsoft security defaults microsoft security defaults](https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-firewall/images/fw01-profiles.png)
Secure servers are good, but user account compromise still happens to give attackers a route into Office 365 tenants. Microsoft manages servers and takes care of basic maintenance and other matters of server hygiene. It becomes potentially disastrous and a one-way ticket to compromise when they are.Īs you might have heard once or twice before, things are different in the cloud. This is acceptable when the servers aren’t exposed to the internet.
![microsoft security defaults microsoft security defaults](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4T0Ki.png)
One of the lessons learned from last year’s Hafnium fiasco was that some organizations with on-premises Exchange servers don’t manage them very well. Need for Protection (and Good Security Defaults) Evident in the Cloud