This is a licensing related question for Azure Active Directory.
We would like to use Azure AD as a SAML identity provider for our own applications, using the available method in the Azure AD Premium subscription, i.e. by creating a new custom application in the 'enterprise applications' list. Now do I need to assign a Premium license to every user that is going to login to this application via SAML? Or does it suffice to assign this license to the users that are administering the application?
The former case seems more plausible to me, however it would be way too expensive for us, and during testing the custom applications seems to work also for users which do not have the license.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/active-directory/
I am not a licesing expert, that said, Azure AD licenses are per user. Read the doc above. If the app is pre-integrated in the gallery, Azure AD users with the free tier can connect to 10 apps at no cost. If the app is on-premises, that requires Azure Application Proxy which would require Azure AD Basic.
If it's a custom application not in the gallery AD Premium is required. Keep in mind AD premium has a ton more functionality. Conditional Access is a Game Changer. Very powerful. Multifactor Authentication, self service password reset, MIM, SCCM CALs, are all included.
Being able to simplify identity for users and link All applications they use to their AD account is important. Ems gives you the ability to monitor identity with Advanced Threat Analytics etc. It's actually a very useful suite of services and not drastically different in price than stand alone AD premium.
There is an interesting point on license page too
Blockquote
With Azure AD Free and Azure AD Basic, end users who have been assigned access to SaaS apps can get SSO access to up to 10 apps. Admins can configure SSO and change user access to different SaaS apps, but SSO access is only allowed for 10 apps per user at a time. All Office 365 apps are counted as one app.
Related
I have two separate web applications, one built with .NET Framework and the other built with .NET Core. Both web applications make up one solution which we ship to our customers. The solution itself is a SaaS subscription-based solution, where users would be able to sign-up with using either a Microsoft/Office 365, GSuite, or organizational account (basic username/password). We would like to restrict sign-up to organizational/business accounts only.
As I understood, Azure B2B is mainly useful when you have something internal and you would like to give external users some limited access to it. Given that I have a multi-tenant SaaS solution, I believe that Azure B2C makes more sense.
Furthermore, in our solution, we would also want the ability for external users to access Tabular Models in Azure Analysis Services and SSRS.
Is access to only organizational accounts, something that can be configured through Azure AD B2C?
Can access be granted to external users to Azure Analysis Services or other Azure tools when using Azure B2C?
You have two options
Option 1, Using Azure AD External identities solution - recommended
You can use newly released self service sign up solution in Azure AD external identities . You can very well restrict sign up to other Azure AD accounts only. However for sign up using other federation systems - you need to try on. I think as of today only Google and Facebook are supported apart from Azure AD.
Option 2, use Azure AD B2C and use app only authentication.
Azure AD B2C consumer accounts are by default not supported by Azure services or Office. But you can use app based authentication to provide these services. Your client app will call your backend api using Azure AD B2C token. Your backend app can perform all auth validations and then call the backend Azure or any other service using app only authentication mode.
What am I missing here? I'm thinking of moving my data center to Azure. I've created a corporate virtual network that has my ADs, my certificates, basically the family jewels of the company that I'm trying to build in the cloud. I've plugged up every obvious security hole that I can think of except one: the login to the Azure Portal is just a simple user id/password. If someone picked off my Microsoft Live user id, all they need is a password cracker. And a disgruntled or dismissed employee could easily cause havoc. Is there some way to lock down the portal? Does anyone in the security business think these Azure web sites are secure?
You can use Azure AD to properly secure the portal authentication. Azure AD is designed to securely authenticate applications in the cloud and it is supported by the majority of Microsoft solutions like Azure Portal. It will provide features like MFA, access control, self-service password reset, etc.
Although Microsoft Accounts also support some of these features, you can't force your users to specific policies, that's why Azure AD is important for enterprise level security.
Once you create a directory for your company through Azure Portal and synchronize your AD objects with Azure AD using the AAD Connect tool you will be able to login to Azure Portal using your corporate credentials and force users to use Multi-factor authentication or even apply other policies.
Azure Active Directory features and capabilities
Azure Active Directory Hybrid Identity Design Considerations
Integrating your on-premises identities with Azure Active Directory
Is it possible to enable multi-factor authentication for getting access to the Azure portal, https://portal.azure.com?
I know there is an MFA server resource in Azure itself, but my understanding is that this is for Azure hosted applications/resources. I initially want to enable MFA for getting access to the portal itself, before setting it up for the different resources themselves in Azure.
Yes, you can.
For example here they say
Add protection for Azure administrator accounts
Multi-Factor Authentication adds a layer of security to your Azure administrator account at no additional cost. When turned on, you need to confirm your identity to spin up a virtual machine, manage storage, or use other Azure services.
Here is one of step-by-step guides.
UPD Feb 2019
Azure is constantly evolving, so many answers and related articles quickly become outdated.
As it is now, MFA is not a free option. I would start reading this Microsoft page for details, in particular:
Multi-Factor Authentication comes as part of the following offerings:
Azure Active Directory Premium licenses
Azure MFA Service (Cloud)
Azure MFA Server
Multi-Factor Authentication for Office 365
Azure Active Directory Global Administrators
EDIT:
The feature I originally mentioned has been replaced by Security Defaults, which includes requiring that all users register for MFA (but non-admin users don't necessarily have to use it), and requires admin users to use MFA.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/concept-fundamentals-security-defaults
Old response:
There is currently a feature in preview offering a baseline policy to apply MFA to the Azure Portal (and PowerShell and CLI).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/conditional-access/concept-baseline-protection#require-mfa-for-service-management-preview
This is applicable even at the free level of AAD.
I am trying to make my way through a lot of Azure documentation on multitenant identity management, for a bespoke ASP.NET MVC SaaS site. It is difficult as it seems that a lot of the online examples and articles are now outdated and not applicable to latest VS templates, and other vague aspects, such as determining what is Preview and what is not. Also, MS tend to use the word "multitenant" when specifically dealing with partner companies who have their own Azure AD, which is not our case.
Our proposed system will offer a web application to different customers. The backend will have a separate db per customer (tenant). The front end will select which db connection (and probably use impersonation) depending on the logged in user. The identity management would preferably be offloaded to Azure ACS, so that in future if we want to integrate with corporations with their own Federation identity provider we can, but for those smaller companies that don't have their own domain, we want to create accounts on their behalf.
I am thinking that a good way to do this is by using Azure ACS (for federating with corporate customers) and a general Azure AD directory (for everyone else), where in the second case I create a group per tenant (customer). Then, in Azure ACS, I translate all claims, either the group from my own AD, or the company name from the federated identity provider, and use that in the MVC app to establish the tenant.
Is this an OK way to do it? Am I overlooking some standard, simple way that Azure already offers? Is this future proof wrt to the Azure roadmap?
for the latest multi tenant samples please see https://github.com/Azure-samples?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=multiten. We are about to release more documentation on how to handle multi tenancy in Azure AD. I would strongly advise against using ACS in any new project, given that we are no longer adding any features and we are actively working on migrating functionality from ACS to Azure AD. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/ad/archive/2015/02/12/the-future-of-azure-acs-is-azure-active-directory.aspx for more details.
I currently have an Office 365 tenant with around 1,400 users all licensed. We have enabled the Azure AD tenant with the same account and are now using Azure AD Dirsync to have same sign-on to Office 365.
We are now having an external Sharepoint site developed and have been offered either ADFS or Azure AD ACS as an authentication method. As we've already got an Azure AD subscription (through Office 365) I thought this would be the easiest method. However, when in my tenant on https://manage.windowsazure.com, I have access to Active Directory, can add a new directory but cannot add a new Access Control service. It's greyed out and says "not available" underneath.
I've tried talking to Office 365 support, who referred me to Azure support, who then said we don't have support so can't help. I've spoken to Azure sales and they've referred me to Azure support, who then guess what, said we don't have support.
Has anyone else managed to implement an Azure Access Control service from an Office 365 tenancy using the free Azure Active Directory subscription? I get the feeling I just need to buy a cheap Azure subscription and the option would become available, but without knowing for sure I'm a bit hesitant about taking the plunge.
Thanks.
I can imagine that you cannot use the free Azure subscription for this purpose because using the Access Control Service brings costs. The free subscription is not tied to any creditcard. When you have e.g. a pay-as-you-go subscription you should be able to create a ACS namespace. I just tried in one of my pay-as-you-go subscriptions.
You are (still) able to create a namespace but I suggest you to also take a look into the identity possibilities Azure AD itself has. Azure AD has currently only support for SAML 2.0 (and a lot of other protocols but they are not directly relevant for SharePoint). I know SharePoint (on-premises) only talks SAML 1.1 so that's where ACS comes in. You can read more about this topic here. Azure AD itself is going to support SAML 1.1. The only question is when. (see one of the comments from the source mentioned below this answer)
I also would make one remark about Azure AD ACS because this is going to be replaced by Azure AD. The only question left is when.
ACS Capabilities in Azure AD
As we've mentioned previously, we are adding ACS-like capabilities into Azure AD. In the coming months, as part of a feature preview Azure AD administrators will be able to add federation with social identity providers, and later custom identity providers to Azure AD. This will allow app developers to use Azure AD to simplify the identity implementation in their apps, similar to how developers use ACS today. We look forward to getting your feedback on the preview to improve these experiences.
Migrating ACS Customers to Azure AD
Once these new ACS capabilities of Azure AD are out of preview and generally available, we will start migrating ACS namespaces to use the new Azure AD capabilities.
Source: The future of Azure ACS is Azure Active Directory
Quick solution:
Create an Azure paid account. Add the administrator user of the paid account in the Office 365 directory, and set it as global administrator of this later directory (you can add users from other directories).
Then switch back to the paid account. The new global administrator will be able to manage the Office 365 directory and add a namespace.