Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory is Microsoft's identity and access management service that is cloud-based. It enables users to access numerous kinds of resources. These resources are classified broadly into two categories:

• External resources include Office 365, Azure Portal, and so many other Saas applications.
• Internal resources include apps built by an organization, systems or apps present within the organization network or intranet, etc.

The?Azure AD (Active Directory) primarily supports Office 365, sync with Active Directory present on the premise, and even authenticates third-party cloud-based apps.

With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, organizations across the IT industry and pretty much every other industry had to function remotely. It was functioning/working off-premise that led to the rapid increase in the usage of Azure Active Directory.

As the pandemic subsides, we see that remote work or hybrid work structures (remote + on-premise) are here to stay to enhance the organization's efficiency. Hence the usage of Azure AD is at an all-time high and will be increasing. Furthermore, it will also help admins understand how systems can be kept secure since most of the data and services will now be on the cloud.

Who Uses Azure Active Directory?

Azure AD primarily has three kinds of users:

• IT Admins
• App Developers
• Online Customers (Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics CRM)

IT Admins

As the name suggests, IT Admins are in charge of administrative procedures such as enabling sign-ins, providing authentication, etc. It also allows organizations to control and manage access to data and services on various levels based on the business requirements.

These various levels help companies limit access on a need-to-know basis, maintain confidentiality, and protect data and the system. Furthermore, Azure AD also facilitates user provisioning and equips admins with tools to protect users' identities in the system.

App Developers

These users build applications with the help of numerous resources that Azure AD provides. In addition, it has APIs to help you develop and create personalized app experiences using an organization's existing data.

The developers can follow the standards-based approach to add a single sign-on to these apps, making them function with existing user credentials.

Online Customers

Subscribers of cloud-based services and apps such as Microsoft 365, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, or other such tools implicitly use Azure AD. Since it is Azure AD that facilitates the sign-ins, usage, integration, and interoperability of these apps. Hence any and every online customer falls under this category of Azure AD users.

How Does Azure Active Directory Work?

Essentially, Azure Active Directory is the bridge between on-premises systems and cloud systems. It uses REST (Representation State Transfer) APIs to communicate and pass data to cloud-based apps and services.

Azure AD has a flat structure with a single tenant. The tenant is sort of a single circle that contains all your stuff. Once it leaves the circle, you lose a significant amount of control over it. There can be multiple tenants with Azure AD.

Azure AD usually works with users and groups. People/employees who access the services are users, and similar types of users can all be assigned one group with the help of Azure AD. For instance, can put all employees in one team or department into one group.

This grouping makes operations more effortless and efficient since permissions and access levels can be given to an entire group instead of giving every individual permission.

Furthermore, users need not be only from within the organization. People from outside the organizations can also be a part of your tenant. If two organizations are working together on something, then the users need to have Microsoft IDs. With the help of this ID, the users can be made a part of the tenant of both organizations.

Some Features Of Azure Active Directory That Can Be Implemented

Monitoring Reports

Monitoring Reports allows you to have eyes on all activities taking place in the entire environment and look at the various logs such as sign-in, provisioning, etc. It gives you a clear idea about the security of the environment, the risks involved, the usage patterns and helps you decide the next steps.

Identity Protection

Identity Protection allows you to perform three tasks mainly:

• Automatically detect and solve identity-based risks.
• Investigate the risks with the help of data present in the portal.
• Move all the risk-based data into the SIEM.

All this allows you to detect the flaws that lead to potential vulnerabilities of an organization's identities and eliminate these flaws. Furthermore, you can also draft and create policies that can help you deal with suspicious activity.

Domain Services

Azure AD Domain Services allows you to create a virtual portal or managed domain and operate it without the need for manually setting up domain controllers. The idea is to connect and sync the Azure AD tenant to the managed domain and make an organization resilient against disasters.

With room for multiple domain controllers, there's high uptime, and the domain controllers can be distributed geographically to add more resilience to the system.

Besides these crucial features, Azure AD provides the basic features of application management, user provisioning, authentication, app development environment, management of guest users, external partners, controlling user sign-ups, managing access and permissions, etc.

How Azure Active Directory Is Vulnerable To Attacks

Since Azure AD is essentially a cloud-first tool and is present over the internet, it is bound to face attacks by various hackers. Some of the most common types of attacks are:

• Brute Force
• Phishing
• Skeleton Key

Brute Force

Hackers have an enormous dump of user IDs and passwords that they use to try and gain access to the Azure tenant. Though Azure AD employs multi-factor authentication, a strong password policy, and a couple of other tactics, there's still a slight chance of a hacker gaining access with this method.

So it is essential to keep an eye out for risky sign-ins and suspicious activity within the environment to mitigate these potential threats.

Phishing

Phishing is another way for hackers to obtain credentials from users within the Azure tenant or spread malware infection. Phishing can easily affect the system and enables hackers to breach in and access the data and system.

One common way to deal with this is by providing warning messages when external users or identities send an email. Warning messages can help the users be more cautious before opening such emails or messages.

Skeleton Key

Azure AD Connect allows you to sync on-premises data with the Azure tenant. While this sync and transfer of data occur, hackers can create backdoors and enter the tenant as synced users of the system.

Thus these are three common forms of attack on Azure AD that leverage the vulnerabilities of Azure AD and pose a threat to the system.

Conclusion

Overall, Azure AD is a tool for the future since it facilitates working on the cloud and remotely, the new norm.