As cyberattacks become increasingly frequent, sophisticated, and damaging, safeguarding your digital assets has never been more critical. In October 2024, Microsoft will begin enforcing mandatory multifactor authentication (MFA) for the Microsoft Azure portal, the Microsoft Entra admin center, and the Microsoft Intune admin center. Services administered through the Microsoft Intune admin center, such as Windows 365, this enforcement will also impact admin access to administer these services. You can apply to postpone the enforcement prior to October 15th.
We published MC862873 to all Intune customers this week. We’ve included the Message center post below.
Take action: Enable multifactor authentication for your tenant before October 15, 2024
Starting on or after October 15, 2024, to further increase security, Microsoft will require admins to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) when signing into the Microsoft Azure portal, Microsoft Entra admin center, and Microsoft Intune admin center. Note: This requirement will also apply to any services accessed through the Intune admin center, such as Windows 365 Cloud PC. To take advantage of the extra layer of protection MFA offers, we recommend enabling MFA as soon as possible. To learn more, review Planning for mandatory multifactor authentication for Azure and admin portals.
How this will affect your organization:
MFA will need to be enabled for your tenant to ensure admins are able to sign-in to the Azure portal, Microsoft Entra admin center and Intune admin center after this change.
What to do to prepare:
- If you have not already, set up MFA before October 15, 2024, to ensure your admins can access the Azure portal, Microsoft Entra admin center, and Intune admin center.
- If you are unable to set up MFA before this date, you can apply to postpone the enforcement date.
- If MFA has not been set up before the enforcement starts, admins will be prompted to register for MFA before they can access the Azure portal, Microsoft Entra admin center, or Intune admin center on their next sign-in.
For more information, refer to: Planning for mandatory multifactor authentication for Azure and admin portals
There’s several blogs and documentation updates already published regarding enforcement, including:
A few notes to help clarify the experience:
- This enforcement is for admins, not for user device enrollment. If you want to require multifactor authentication for Intune device enrollments, see the following documentation: Require multifactor authentication for Intune device enrollment.
- Postponement applies to all properties (the Azure portal, the Microsoft Entra admin center and the Microsoft Intune admin center). If you apply to postpone the MFA enforcement, we still recommend enabling MFA ahead of your tenant’s new enforcement date of March 15, 2025.
More information can be found in Azure’s blog: Announcing mandatory multi-factor authentication for Azure sign-in. We’ll add more information as we publish it. Please let us know if you have any questions during this important security implementation.
