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Microsoft Entra Blog
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#AzureAD Conditional Access for #Office365 Exchange & SharePoint preview!

Alex Simons (AZURE)'s avatar
Sep 07, 2018
First published on CloudBlogs on Jun, 23 2016
Howdy, I'm super excited to announce preview of Azure AD Conditional Access policies for Exchange and SharePoint Online is now available. These policies can be used to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) or block access based on network location. We've heard over and over again how critical it is for organizations to apply additional security to Exchange and SharePoint, while not impacting access to other services. Now, as part of the Conditional Access public preview, rules can be applied to Exchange or SharePoint Online. This is a big step forward as we continue to build up the Conditional Access policy framework. As part of this release we are adding support for the following rules to Exchange and SharePoint Online:
  1. Always require MFA
  2. Require MFA when not at work
  3. Block access when not at work.
You may already be familiar with these policies, as we already provide them for other applications, including Azure App Proxy, apps from the application gallery, Azure Remote App, Yammer and Dynamics CRM. We recommend enabling these polices alongside risk based Conditional Access policy available with Azure AD Identity Protection . The risk based policies give an advanced baseline of coverage, challenging users for MFA or blocking access as risk is detected. Then apply a per-application policy, like always requiring MFA, for services with additional security or compliance requirements.

Client Apps

Conditional Access policy applies to browser based access to OWA and SharePoint Online (which includes OneDrive) web sites. It also works for desktop and mobile application access when using applications that support modern authentication. Using modern authentication allows the Azure AD sign in page to be shown from the app, either prompting the user for MFA, or explaining why access has been blocked. We've spend a lot of time validating the behavior across client applications and platforms. Here are the applications we've tested so far, that use Exchange and SharePoint: For Windows 10, Windows10 Mobile, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Mac
  • Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint in Office 2016
  • Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint in Office 2013 (with modern authentication enabled)
  • OneDrive Sync Client (with modern authentication)
iOS and Android
  • Outlook email app
For a more detailed view go here .

Getting Started

Let's start by applying an MFA conditional access policy to access Exchange. This will apply to mobile and desktop applications as well OWA in the browser. As a pre-requisite you'll need an Office365 and Azure AD Premium license.
  1. Start by signing into the Azure management portal .
  2. Under the Active Directory section, select your directory and then select the Applications tab.

  1. Select Office 365 Exchange Online. Then select the Configure tab.

  1. On this tab you can enable 'multi-factor authentication and location based rules' by setting Enable Access Rules to ON.

  1. Once the rule is enabled you will be shown the rule options. In this example we're going to apply Conditional Access to all users. Instead of selecting all users, you also have the option to identify users based on their security groups.

  1. The rule selected "Require multi-factor authentication" will require users to have performed MFA before they can access the mailbox. Users will still sign into other sites using web apps, like the Office 365 portal, with just username password.

Once signed in, the user can go to their mail.

At this point the Conditional Access policy we set above, and the user will need to complete MFA before getting access.

Try it out

We're excited to be making this preview available. Please give it a spin and let us know what you think. You can learn more about Conditional Access here . This is a set of capabilities that I know a LOT of you have been asking for. I hope you'll find it useful. And as always, we would love to receive any feedback of suggestions you have. Best Regards, Alex Simons (Twitter: @Alex_A_Simons ) Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity Division
Updated Jul 24, 2020
Version 6.0
  • how current is this? these screen shots look nothing like my current tenant. and i'd really like to set it for ANY office365 interface, teams, sharepoint, exchange.. etc. currently the 'enterprise applications' doesn't show the overall portal.office.com so I can force MFA. 
    I have been tasked to review & Get it implemented, and Microsoft seems to have changed things so its no longer possible to force MFA when off lan for all features.

  • Hi Phillip - that blog post is 2+ years out of date. If you set Conditional Access policies on Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive, I believe you will get what you are looking for here.

  • well that'll set it for owa, but not portal.office.com in my testing & that's causing compliance auditors to get itchy. fwiw, i'm trying to fix something that was setup by 'consultants' 14 months ago, and i'd love to find out if I can review what I've got with MS, or if there's a KB I could review for wahts currently available.

  • Swee Gee CHUA's avatar
    Swee Gee CHUA
    Copper Contributor

    Hi Alex, Is the MFA for SharePoint Online available at Site Collection Level for Conditional Access. Thanks.

    Or is there a roadmap for this?

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