Which of the following is the first step to allow third party devices to perform device registration to access domain resources from the Internet?

The term application or app in Auth0 does not imply any particular implementation characteristics. For example, it could be a native app that executes on a mobile device, a single-page application that executes on a browser, or a regular web application that executes on a server.

Auth0 categorizes apps based on these characteristics:

• Application type: To add authentication to your application, you must register it in the Auth0 Dashboard and select from one of the following application types:

  • Regular web application: Traditional web apps that perform most of their application logic on the server (such as Express.js or ASP.NET). To learn how to set up a regular web application, read Register Regular Web Applications.

  • Single page web application (SPA): JavaScript apps that perform most of their user interface logic in a web browser, communicating with a web server primarily using APIs (such as AngularJS + Node.js or React). To learn how to set up a Single-page web application, read Register Single-Page Web Applications.

  • Native application: Mobile or Desktop applications that run natively on a device (such as iOS or Android). To learn how to set up a native application, read Register Native Applications.

  • Machine to machine (M2M) application: Non-interactive applications, such as command-line tools, daemons, IoT devices, or services running on your backend. Typically, you use this option if you have a service that requires access to an API. To learn how to set up a native application, read Register Machine-to-Machine Applications.

• Credential security: According to the OAuth 2.0 spec, apps can be classified as either public or confidential; confidential apps can hold credentials securely, while public apps cannot. To learn more, read Confidential and Public Applications.

• Ownership: Whether an app is classified as first- or third-party depends on app ownership and control. First-party apps are controlled by the same organization or person that owns the Auth0 domain. Third-party apps enable external parties or partners to securely access protected resources behind your API. To learn more, read First-Party and Third-Party Applications.

Manage applications settings

You register applications in Dashboard > Applications > Applications. In addition to setting up applications in the Dashboard, you can also set up applications programmatically as described in the OpenID Connect (OIDC) Dynamic Client Registration 1.0 specification.

You can set up a more complex configuration that allows users to log in differently for different apps. To learn more, read Multi-Tenant Application Best Practices and Create Multiple Tenants.

By default, Auth0 enables all connections associated with your tenant when you create a new application. To change this, update application connections in the Application Settings in the Dashboard.

You can monitor apps and perform end-to-end testing using your own tests. Auth0 stores log data including Dashboard administrator actions, successful and failed user authentications, and password change requests. You can use Auth0 Extensions to export your log data and use tools like Sumo Logic, Splunk, or Loggly to analyze and store your log data.

You can remove an application using the Dashboard or the Management API.

A client secret is a secret known only to your application and the authorization server. It protects your resources by only granting tokens to authorized requestors.

Protect your client secrets and never include them in mobile or browser-based apps. If your client secret is ever compromised, you should rotate to a new one and update all authorized apps with the new client secret.

Auth0 provides many different authentication and authorization grant types or flows and allows you to indicate which grant types are appropriate based on the grant_types property of your Auth0-registered app. To learn more, read Application Grant Types.

Office 365 offers some fantastic benefits over traditional on-premise infrastructure.  No costly infrastructure required, no advanced IT knowledge required, 100 GB mailbox, online meetings, document collaboration, 99.9 % uptime, flexibility allowing businesses to provide users with only the services they need and anytime and anywhere access to emails, documents, contacts, and calendars on any device.

This blog will explore the last benefit – anytime and anywhere access to Office 365.

As the image suggests, Office 365 means that we can all do our jobs from anywhere (coffee shop, pub, home) on any device we want to use.  In reality, most companies do not work this way and do not want to work this way.  For a lot of companies, Office 365 solves the problem of not requiring infrastructure, complicated exchange deployments and HA/DR as data is now in the cloud so is not the IT department's problem.

The ‘Anytime and Anywhere Access to Office 365’ does, however, highlight the following security concerns for Office 365 deployed with ‘out of the box’ settings.

• Office 365 can be accessed from anywhere – not just in the office, anywhere there is internet access.
• Office 365 can be accessed from any device – not just corporate owned devices, any device (Personal Windows/Mac laptop, tablet, phone, any device with a browser or Outlook client installed).
• Office 365 can be accessed by just a username and password.

From a data loss prevention point of view, this causes the following issues:

• Emails can be cached offline and copied elsewhere on a home PC with Outlook.
• Mail can be downloaded to mobile devices and copied to other locations.
• OneDrive for Business can be synced offline to a home PC and all data copied elsewhere/shared.
• SharePoint Online can be synced offline to a home PC and all data copied elsewhere/shared.
• Multi-factor is not turned on by default for Office 365 – To login only a username and password is required.

I always highlight this issue during my first workshop with a new client about to move some services to Office 365.  Some clients accept this behaviour as being the new flexible working world, most clients do not; and I can see the Security Manager fall off their chair about moving services to the cloud!

The old solution to these issues with on-premise environments used to be VPNs.  VPNs control who can and cannot connect to on-premise data. However, once we start moving data/resources into the cloud, we need to implement different solutions to control access to our data.

The majority of requests for lock down of Office 365 are as follows:

• Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our company offices?
• Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our corporate devices?
• Can we provide additional security during login process – i.e., MFA?

The answer to these security questions is yes: Azure offers Conditional Access to lock down Office 365. However, as with most things in life, it will cost you a bit extra. For this additional service, each user will need an Azure AD Premium license which also comes bundled in Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite – nothing comes for free.

Solution

Microsoft introduced Conditional Access to resolve this problem. Conditional Access allows administrators to control what Office 365 apps users can gain access to based on if they pass/fail certain conditions.

These conditions are enforced by building a policy (or multiple policies) to control how users access your Office 365 resources.

Policy Conditions

The following conditions can be controlled by the policy:

• Users/Groups – What users do you want to control – Users can be included/excluded from the policy if required. You will always get the person who is too important for this policy and wants to access everything from their personal iPad. It also allows you to test policies before rolling out to the wider business avoiding locking everyone out!
• Cloud Apps- What apps do you want to control? Conditional Access does not need to apply to all of Office 365, you can be more granular and just control access to specific apps – E.g. Exchange Online.
• Client App – Control what app/software the user is connecting from to the data – E.g. allow browsers but disable mobile and desktop Outlook apps.
• Device Platform – Control what devices users can connect from – E.g. allow Windows and iOS but block Android phones.
• Location – Control what IPs can connect to Office 365 – E.g. could limit this to the office external IP.
• Sign In Risk – Control signs in if Office 365/Azure thinks the sign in is not coming from the genuine user – E.g. if someone signs in from London then New York 30 mins later.

Based on the conditions above, access can be allowed to Office 365 with the following conditions:

• Require multi-factor authentication– User is allowed in but will need to complete additional security to log in, e.g.:
  • Phone call
  • Text message
  • Mobile app
• Require device to be marked as compliant – Device must be Intune compliant, E.g. the device must match the Intune compliance policies to be able to connect.
• Require domain joined (Hybrid Azure AD) – Devices must be Hybrid Azure AD joined – E.g. Mobile Devices Azure AD registered and domain joined machines are set to automatically register in their Azure AD.
• Require approved app – You can select the requirement to grant access only if a connection attempt was made by an approved client app. These apps support Mobile Application Management (MAM) policies, so administrators can wrap security around these apps (e.g. stop copying and pasting information out of these apps).

User Experience for requirements

The above settings offer a wide range of options for restricting access to Office 365.  Let's take our three most common requests and show the user experience if they try and access Office 365 from non-compliant devices:

• Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our company offices?
• Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our corporate devices?
• Can we provide additional security during log on process – i.e. MFA?

Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our company offices?

For this example, we have restricted access so that users can only connect to Office 365 if they are coming from the corporate IP range (external).

The following Settings were configured in Azure Conditional Access.
Block access to Exchange Online based on location.
The following screen details the end user experience for a user accessing Office 365 from a device that is not coming from the corporate IP address.
User logs into Office 365 with credentials.
Azure Conditional Access identifies that the user is not coming from a trusted IP address and blocks access.

Can we lock down access to Office 365 to our corporate devices?

For this example, we have restricted access so that users can only connect to Office 365 if they are on a domain-joined device or mobile device that has been enrolled in Intune/Azure AD. Below is the user experience if a user is on a non-domain joined machine:

The following settings were configured in Azure Conditional Access.
Allow access to Exchange Online based on device – I.e. only allow if a device is domain joined and registered in Azure AD.
The following screen details the end user experience for a user accessing Office 365 from a non-domain joined machine.
User logs into Office 365 with credentials.
Azure Conditional Access identifies that the user is not coming from a domain joined machine and refuses the connection – The following screen shows the OWA experience.
Azure Conditional Access identifies that the user is not coming from a domain joined machine and refuses the connection – The following screen shows the Outlook 2016 experience.

Can we provide additional security during log on process – i.e. MFA?

For this example, we have configured additional security for users accessing Office 365 if they are NOT coming from the corporate IP range (external).  Please note, MFA only provides additional security if the user has the correct MFA devices they can log in to Office 365 from any device.

The following settings were configured in Azure Conditional Access.
Require additional security to Office 365 if accessing from non-corporate IP range.
The following screen details the end user experience for a user accessing Office 365 from a device that is not coming from the corporate IP address.
User logs into Office 365 with credentials.
Azure Conditional Access identifies that the user is not coming from a trusted IP address requires additional security.
The user will need to approve additional security on their phone – e.g. Azure Authenticator App.

Gotchas

As with most Microsoft solutions, Conditional Access is not without its flaws.

Conditional Access will not work in the following situations:

• Client App – Not all client apps support Conditional Access – the Client App needs to support Modern Authentication. e.g. Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 (with a reg key change).
  • Outlook 2010 will not work with Conditional Access and the user will be allowed to connect in; to lock down Outlook 2010 based on IP Ranges requires ADFS claims rules.
  • Upgrade to Outlook 2016 if your business is still using this; it is 2018! Any 3rd party apps (e.g. Outlook Plugins) that don’t support above Outlook 2010, put pressure on the vendor to fix this.  Don’t let your Office 365 migration be hindered by a non-future-proof app.

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