Security Guidance Series: CAF 4.0 Understanding Threat From Awareness to Intelligence-Led Defence
The updated CAF 4.0 raises expectations around control A2.b - Understanding Threat. Rather than focusing solely on awareness of common cyber-attacks, the framework now calls for a sector-specific, intelligence-informed understanding of the threat landscape. According to the NCSC, CAF 4.0 emphasizes the need for detailed threat analysis that reflects the tactics, techniques, and resources of capable adversaries, and requires that this understanding directly shapes security and resilience decisions. For public sector authorities, this means going beyond static risk registers to build a living threat model that evolves alongside digital transformation and service delivery. Public sector authorities need to know which systems and datasets are most exposed, from citizen records and clinical information to education systems, operational platforms, and payment gateways, and anticipate how an attacker might exploit them to disrupt essential services. To support this higher level of maturity, Microsoft’s security ecosystem helps public sector authorities turn threat intelligence into actionable understanding, directly aligning with CAF 4.0’s Achieved criteria for control A2.b. Microsoft E3 - Building Foundational Awareness Microsoft E3 provides public sector authorities with the foundational capabilities to start aligning with CAF 4.0 A2.b by enabling awareness of common threats and applying that awareness to risk decisions. At this maturity level, organizations typically reach Partially Achieved, where threat understanding is informed by incidents rather than proactive analysis. How E3 contributes to Contributing Outcome A2.b: Visibility of basic threats: Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 surfaces malware and unsafe application activity, giving organizations insight into how adversaries exploit endpoints. This telemetry helps identify initial attacker entry points and informs reactive containment measures. Identity risk reduction: Entra ID P1 enforces MFA and blocks legacy authentication, mitigating common credential-based attacks. These controls reduce the likelihood of compromise at early stages of an attacker’s path. Incident-driven learning: Alerts and Security & Compliance Centre reports allow organizations to review how attacks unfolded, supporting documentation of observed techniques and feeding lessons into risk decisions. What’s missing for Achieved: To fully meet the contributing outcomes A2.b, public sector organizations must evolve from incident-driven awareness to structured, intelligence-led threat analysis. This involves anticipating probable attack methods, developing plausible scenarios, and maintaining a current threat picture through proactive hunting and threat intelligence. These capabilities extend beyond the E3 baseline and require advanced analytics and dedicated platforms. Microsoft E5 – Advancing to Intelligence-Led Defence Where E3 establishes the foundation for identifying and documenting known threats, Microsoft E5 helps public sector organizations to progress toward the Achieved level of CAF control A2.b by delivering continuous, intelligence-driven analysis across every attack surface. How E5 aligns with Contributing Outcome A2.b: Detailed, up-to-date view of attacker paths: At the core of E5 is Defender XDR, which correlates telemetry from Defender for Endpoint Plan 2, Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Cloud Apps. This unified view reveals how attackers move laterally between devices, identities, and SaaS applications - directly supporting CAF’s requirement to understand probable attack methods and the steps needed to reach critical targets. Advanced hunting and scenario development: Defender for Endpoint P2 introduces advanced hunting via Kusto Query Language (KQL) and behavioural analytics. Analysts can query historical data to uncover persistence mechanisms or privilege escalation techniques, assisting organizations to anticipate attack chains and develop plausible scenarios, a key expectation under A2.b. Email and collaboration threat modelling: Defender for Office 365 P2 detects targeted phishing, business email compromise, and credential harvesting campaigns. Attack Simulation Training adds proactive testing of social engineering techniques, helping organizations maintain awareness of evolving attacker tradecraft and refine mitigations. Identity-focused threat analysis: Defender for Identity and Entra ID P2 expose lateral movement, credential abuse, and risky sign-ins. By mapping tactics and techniques against frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, organizations can gain the attacker’s perspective on identity systems - fulfilling CAF’s call to view networks from a threat actor’s lens. Cloud application risk visibility: Defender for Cloud Apps highlights shadow IT and potential data exfiltration routes, helping organizations to document and justify controls at each step of the attack chain. Continuous threat intelligence: Microsoft Threat Intelligence enriches detections with global and sector-specific insights on active adversary groups, emerging malware, and infrastructure trends. This sustained feed helps organizations maintain a detailed understanding of current threats, informing risk decisions and prioritization. Why this meets Achieved: E5 capabilities help organizations move beyond reactive alerting to a structured, intelligence-led approach. Threat knowledge is continuously updated, scenarios are documented, and controls are justified at each stage of the attacker path, supporting CAF control A2.b’s expectation that threat understanding informs risk management and defensive prioritization. Sentinel While Microsoft E5 delivers deep visibility across endpoints, identities, and applications, Microsoft Sentinel acts as the unifying layer that helps transform these insights into a comprehensive, evidence-based threat model, a core expectation of Achieved maturity under CAF 4.0 A2.b. How Sentinel enables Achieved outcomes: Comprehensive attack-chain visibility: As a cloud-native SIEM and SOAR, Sentinel ingests telemetry from Microsoft and non-Microsoft sources, including firewalls, OT environments, legacy servers, and third-party SaaS platforms. By correlating these diverse signals into a single analytical view, Sentinel allows defenders to visualize the entire attack chain, from initial reconnaissance through lateral movement and data exfiltration. This directly supports CAF’s requirement to understand how capable, well-resourced actors could systematically target essential systems. Attacker-centric analysis and scenario building: Sentinel’s Analytics Rules and MITRE ATT&CK-aligned detections provide a structured lens on tactics and techniques. Security teams can use Kusto Query Language (KQL) and advanced hunting to identify anomalies, map adversary behaviours, and build plausible threat scenarios, addressing CAF’s expectation to anticipate probable attack methods and justify mitigations at each step. Threat intelligence integration: Sentinel enriches local telemetry with intelligence from trusted sources such as the NCSC and Microsoft’s global network. This helps organizations maintain a current, sector-specific understanding of threats, applying that knowledge to prioritize risk treatment and policy decisions, a defining characteristic of Achieved maturity. Automation and repeatable processes: Sentinel’s SOAR capabilities operationalize intelligence through automated playbooks that contain threats, isolate compromised assets, and trigger investigation workflows. These workflows create a documented, repeatable process for threat analysis and response, reinforcing CAF’s emphasis on continuous learning and refinement. This video brings CAF A2.b – Understanding Threat – to life, showing how public sector organizations can use Microsoft security tools to build a clear, intelligence-led view of attacker behaviour and meet the expectations of CAF 4.0. Why this meets Achieved: By consolidating telemetry, threat intelligence, and automated response into one platform, Sentinel elevates public sector organizations from isolated detection to an integrated, intelligence-led defence posture. Every alert, query, and playbook contributes to an evolving organization-wide threat model, supporting CAF A2.b’s requirement for detailed, proactive, and documented threat understanding. CAF 4.0 challenges every public-sector organization to think like a threat actor, to understand not just what could go wrong, but how and why. Does your organization have the visibility, intelligence, and confidence to turn that understanding into proactive defence? To illustrate how this contributing outcome can be achieved in practice, the one-slider and demo show how Microsoft’s security capabilities help organizations build the detailed, intelligence-informed threat picture expected by CAF 4.0. These examples turn A2.b’s requirements into actionable steps for organizations. In the next article, we’ll explore C2 - Threat Hunting: moving from detection to anticipation and embedding proactive resilience as a daily capability.Welcome to the Microsoft Security Community!
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Windows Hello passkeys dialog appearing and cannot remove or suppress it.
Hi everyone, I’m dealing with a persistent Windows Hello and passkey issue in Chrome and Brave and yes this is relevant as they're the only browsers having this issue whilst Edge for example is fine, and at this point I’m trying to understand whether this is expected behavior, a bug, or a design oversight. PS. Yes, I'm in contact with related browser support teams but since they seem utterly hopeless i'm asking here, since its at least partially Windows Hello issue. Problem description Even with: Password managers disabled in browser settings, Windows Hello disabled in Chrome/Brave settings, Windows Hello PIN enabled only for device login, Passkeys still stored under chrome://settings/passkeys (which I cannot delete since its used for logging on the device), The devices are connected to Entra ID but this is not required to reproduce the issue although a buisness account configuration creates a Passkey with Windows Hello afaik. Observed behavior When I attempt to sign in on office.com, Windows Hello automatically triggers a dialog offering authentication via passkeys, even though: I don’t want passkeys used for browser logins, passkeys are turned off everywhere they can be, Windows Hello is intended only for local device authentication. The dialog cannot be suppressed, disabled, or hidden(trust me, i tried for weeks). It effectively forces the Windows Hello prompt as a primary option, which causes problems both personally and in business contexts (wrong credential signaling, misleading users that are supposed to use a dedicated password manager solution insted of browser password managers, enforcing an unwanted authentication flow, etc.). What I already verified Many, many, (too many) Windows registry workarounds that never worked. Dug through almost all flags on those browsers. Chrome/Brave → Password Manager: disabled Chrome/Brave → Windows Hello toggle: off Looked through what feels like almost every related option in Windows Settings. Tried gpedit.msc local rules System up to date Windows Hello configured to use PIN, but stores "passkeys used to log on to this device" Why this is a problem Windows Hello automatically assumes that the device-level Windows Hello credentials should always be available as a WebAuthn authenticator. This feels like a big security and UX issue due to: unexpected authentication dialogs, Inability to controll where and how passkey credential are shared to applications, inability to turn the feature off, no administrative or local option to disable Hello for WebAuthn separately from device login. Buisness users either having issues with keeping passwords in order (our buissnes uses a dedicated Password Manager but this behaviour covers its dialog option) or not having PIN to their devices (when I disable windows hello entierly, since when there is no passkeys the option doesn't appear) Questions Is there any supported way to disable Windows Hello as a WebAuthn/passkey option in browsers, while keeping Hello enabled for local device login? Is this expected behavior from the Windows Hello, or is it considered a bug? Are there registry/policy settings (documented or upcoming) that allow disabling the Windows platform authenticator specifically for browsers like Chrome and Brave? Is Microsoft aware of this issue? If so, is it tracked anywhere? Additional notes This issue replicates 100% across (as long as there are passkeys configured): Windows 11 devices i've managed to get my hands on, Chrome and Brave (latest versions), multiple Microsoft accounts and tenants, multiple clean installations. Any guidance or clarification from the Windows security or identity teams would be greatly appreciated. And honestly if there is any more info i could possibly provide PLEASE ask away.Request to enable preview feature - Face Check with CAP
Dear Microsoft, I am on a business premium plan for my home test tenant. I cannot raise ticket nor do I have an account manager. I know this is in private preview. I would like my tenant to be enabled to test this new Verified ID feature to have "Face Check" in CAP as one of the Grant conditions. tenant id: bc85b508-0107-4472-a49c-fc8cefd4f0d7 Thank you.Microsoft Ignite 2025: Top Security Innovations You Need to Know
🤖 Security & AI -The Big Story This Year 2025 marks a turning point for cybersecurity. Rapid adoption of AI across enterprises has unlocked innovation but introduced new risks. AI agents are now part of everyday workflows-automating tasks and interacting with sensitive data—creating new attack surfaces that traditional security models cannot fully address. Threat actors are leveraging AI to accelerate attacks, making speed and automation critical for defense. Organizations need solutions that deliver visibility, governance, and proactive risk management for both human and machine identities. Microsoft Ignite 2025 reflects this shift with announcements focused on securing AI at scale, extending Zero Trust principles to AI agents, and embedding intelligent automation into security operations. As a Senior Cybersecurity Solution Architect, I’ve curated the top security announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2025 to help you stay ahead of evolving threats and understand the latest innovations in enterprise security. Agent 365: Control Plane for AI Agents Agent 365 is a centralized platform that gives organizations full visibility, governance, and risk management over AI agents across Microsoft and third-party ecosystems. Why it matters: Unmanaged AI agents can introduce compliance gaps and security risks. Agent 365 ensures full lifecycle control. Key Features: Complete agent registry and discovery Access control and conditional policies Visualization of agent interactions and risk posture Built-in integration with Defender, Entra, and Purview Available via the Frontier Program Microsoft Agent 365: The control plane for AI agents Deep dive blog on Agent 365 Entra Agent ID: Zero Trust for AI Identities Microsoft Entra is the identity and access management suite (covering Azure AD, permissions, and secure access). Entra Agent ID extends Zero Trust identity principles to AI agents, ensuring they are governed like human identities. Why it matters: Unmanaged or over-privileged AI agents can create major security gaps. Agent ID enforces identity governance on AI agents and reduces automation risks. Key Features: Provides unique identities for AI agents Lifecycle governance and sponsorship for agents Conditional access policies applied to agent activity Integrated with open SDKs/APIs for third‑party platforms Microsoft Entra Agent ID Overview Entra Ignite 2025 announcements Public Preview details Security Copilot Expansion Security Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant for security teams, now expanded to automate threat hunting, phishing triage, identity risk remediation, and compliance tasks. Why it matters: Security teams face alert fatigue and resource constraints. Copilot accelerates response and reduces manual effort. Key Features: 12 new Microsoft-built agents across Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview. 30+ partner-built agents available in the Microsoft Security Store. Automates threat hunting, phishing triage, identity risk remediation, and compliance tasks. Included for Microsoft 365 E5 customers at no extra cost. Security Copilot inclusion in Microsoft 365 E5 Security Copilot Ignite blog Security Dashboard for AI A unified dashboard for CISOs and risk leaders to monitor AI risks, aggregate signals from Microsoft security services, and assign tasks via Security Copilot - included at no extra cost. Why it matters: Provides a single pane of glass for AI risk management, improving visibility and decision-making. Key Features: Aggregates signals from Entra, Defender, and Purview Supports natural language queries for risk insights Enables task assignment via Security Copilot Ignite Session: Securing AI at Scale Microsoft Security Blog Microsoft Defender Innovations Microsoft Defender serves as Microsoft’s CNAPP solution, offering comprehensive, AI-driven threat protection that spans endpoints, email, cloud workloads, and SIEM/SOAR integrations. Why It Matters Modern attacks target multi-cloud environments and software supply chains. These innovations provide proactive defense, reduce breach risks before exploitation, and extend protection beyond Microsoft ecosystems-helping organizations secure endpoints, identities, and workloads at scale. Key Features: Predictive Shielding: Proactively hardens attack paths before adversaries pivot. Automatic Attack Disruption: Extended to AWS, Okta, and Proofpoint via Sentinel. Supply Chain Security: Defender for Cloud now integrates with GitHub Advanced Security. What’s new in Microsoft Defender at Ignite Defender for Cloud innovations Global Secure Access & AI Gateway Part of Microsoft Entra’s secure access portfolio, providing secure connectivity and inspection for web and AI traffic. Why it matters: Protects against lateral movement and AI-specific threats while maintaining secure connectivity. Key Features: TLS inspection, URL/file filtering AI Prompt Injection protection Private access for domain controllers to prevent lateral movement attacks. Learn about Secure Web and AI Gateway for agents Microsoft Entra: What’s new in secure access on the AI frontier Purview Enhancements Microsoft Purview is the data governance and compliance platform, ensuring sensitive data is classified, protected, and monitored. Why it matters: Ensures sensitive data remains protected and compliant in AI-driven environments. Key Features: AI Observability: Monitor agent activities and prevent sensitive data leakage. Compliance Guardrails: Communication compliance for AI interactions. Expanded DSPM: Data Security Posture Management for AI workloads. Announcing new Microsoft Purview capabilities to protect GenAI agents Intune Updates Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint device management solution that secures apps, devices, and data across platforms. It simplifies endpoint security management and accelerates response to device risks using AI. Why it matters: Endpoint security is critical as organizations manage diverse devices in hybrid environments. These updates reduce complexity, speed up remediation, and leverage AI-driven automation-helping security teams stay ahead of evolving threats. Key Features: Security Copilot agents automate policy reviews, device offboarding, and risk-based remediation. Enhanced remote management for Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). Policy Configuration Agent in Intune lets IT admins create and validate policies with natural language What’s new in Microsoft Intune at Ignite Your guide to Intune at Ignite Closing Thoughts Microsoft Ignite 2025 signals the start of an AI-driven security era. From visibility and governance for AI agents to Zero Trust for machine identities, automation in security operations, and stronger compliance for AI workloads-these innovations empower organizations to anticipate threats, simplify governance, and accelerate secure AI adoption without compromising compliance or control. 📘 Full Coverage: Microsoft Ignite 2025 Book of News
Global Secure Access - Conditional Access Require GSA - Android Blocked
Hello all, I am currently working on deploying Global Secure Access client with Microsoft Forward Traffic profile and a conditional access policy to block access to M365 services unless connected through the GSA client. I have this working as I want it for Windows and mobile devices in a tenant we use for development. However, when I set this up at our live tenant, I cannot get the Android device to work. My setup is a Personally Owned Work Profile with the Defender app deployed and configured to enable GSA. I can connect to Global Secure Access and it does show some traffic tunneling to Microsoft. However, when I go to login to another app like Outlook, it blocks the sign-in. This is not the case for an iPhone I have personally enrolled and my Entra Joined laptop. Upon investigation of any differences between our development tenant (working fully) and our tenant (Android not working) I found that in the GSA section under Services, there is an extra service called “Microsoft Entra Channel Access”. This service does not show up when I am logged in our developer tenant. Even on the same phone by removing work profiles and signing in to both tenants, our live tenant shows the new channel, and the developer tenant does not have it. I did some log review with the advanced diagnostics feature and the app and noted a few things I am lead to believe that the issue is with this new Entra Channel that has been deployed to our live tenant and not to our dev tenant yet. When I go to sign-in to the Outlook application in the work profile for the developer tenant, I can see the authentication traffic being tunneled through the Microsoft 365 profile. (login.live.com, login.microsoftonline.com, and aadcdn.msftauth.net). However, in our production tenant when doing the same test I do not see those destinations being tunneled at all. I do see the traffic being collected in the “Hostname” section, but is not being tunneled. Another interesting point with this is that on an iPhone I am testing; I do see the authentication destinations being tunneled through the Entra Channel. Here are the screenshots of my findings. https://imgur.com/a/82r3HQC I have an open Microsoft support case and hoping to get the attention of a Microsoft employee or MVP who may be able to get this in front of the Entra product team to see if this is a bug.Synced Passkeys in Microsoft Entra for Phishing-resistant MFA
Register, sync, and use passkeys with just your device’s camera and biometrics, making authentication seamless, fast, and phishing-resistant. As an admin, control who uses which passkey type, streamline recovery with Verified ID, and automatically remediate risk in real time. Jarred Boone, Identity Security Senior Product Manager, shows how users can access work apps safely, confidently, and efficiently while reducing help desk overhead. Stop phishing in its tracks. Passkeys won’t authenticate on fake sites. Check out Microsoft Entra ID. Fast, secure, app-free setup. Use built-in facial recognition or fingerprint to enable passwordless access. Check out passkeys in Microsoft Entra ID. Keep accounts secure. Recover using government-issued ID + selfie, then register a new passkey. See how to use Verified ID in Microsoft Entra. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Passkeys in Microsoft Entra ID 01:19 — Register your passkey 02:12 — Authenticate into apps & services 03:34 — Sync passkeys on updated devices 04:16 — Configure passkeys as an admin 05:51 — Account recovery 07:18 — Conditional Access policies 07:53 — Wrap up Link References Check out https://aka.ms/PasskeysInEntra Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics Video Transcript: -Microsoft Entra ID now supports secure sign-in to your work apps with synced passkeys, so they’re automatically available across the devices you use. Today we’ll look at your passkey options in Microsoft Entra ID. But first, I’ll start by explaining how passkeys improve protection. With the sophistication of phishing attacks, even if basic MFA is in use, a user can be tricked into sharing a second factor, such as a code sent in email or SMS text message, which will ultimately be used by the attacker to gain access. -If we take the same kind of attack using a passkey, even if the user is duped by the phishing email, the attacker really can’t go any further, since the passkey won’t present itself to an invalid phishing site. Passkeys require a registered device and a biometric or local PIN, and are registered to only work with specified sites or apps. So, under the hood, passkeys are built on FIDO2 standards and use public key cryptography, and they can either be device-bound passkeys, which limit portability and keep all secrets local on the device, or synced passkeys, which will work across devices using a centralized cloud service offered by platform providers, like Apple’s iCloud Keychain, or Google Password Manager, and others. -So, passkeys are a huge improvement over MFA credential types that can be phished, and they simplify secure authentication. In fact, let me show you the experience with synced passkeys. In this case, we’ll assume I’m an everyday business user with a personally-owned iPhone and Mac needing access to their work apps. The first step is to register your passkey. From my browser, I’m in my Account at My Sign-Ins, and first need to add a sign-in method. Because I want to register my iPhone without the Authenticator app, I’ll choose the Passkey option and Create a Passkey Using Another Device. Then I’ll select iPhone, iPad, or Android Device option. -Now, to continue the registration, I’ll need to continue from my iPhone 11, and I only need to use the built-in camera app So I’ll open the camera app, point it at the QR code, then add the passkey. And that will use Face ID for biometric proof. And it’s added to the iCloud keychain Then, in my browser, I just need to give it a name. I’ll use the default, iCloud Keychain. And it’s registered. Now, with the passkey ready to go, I can use it to authenticate into apps and services. So I’ll open up the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which has not yet been signed into. Now, I’ll type in my username, arba15@woodgrove.ms. I’ll keep the Face, Fingerprint, or Security Key option, And that’s going to use Face ID to complete the authentication. -And as you can see, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app loads. So I didn’t need to install an authenticator app, and, again, I just used the built-in camera app to register the passkey, along with Face ID biometric support from my iPhone. Because this passkey is synced, when I sign in on my Mac later on, it will use the same passkey I just created. So on my Mac, I already have the Microsoft 365 website open. I’ll sign in. And notice that it already recognizes there is an existing account for this domain I’ll use that, and automatically, it takes me to the Face, Fingerprint, PIN, or Security Key option. And it uses the passkey synced already from my iPhone to this device. In this case, it’s asking for my enrolled fingerprint, because Mac uses fingerprint for a second factor of authentication. Then, I’m signed in to Microsoft 365. And just like that, I can start using Copilot. Because the passkey was saved to my iCloud Keychain and I set up my Mac to sync passkeys from iCloud, it’s already ready to use. No extra setup or configuration was required. -And let’s say I want to replace my iPhone later on. I won’t need to register a passkey on that device either. The passkey will just sync. Let me show you. So on my new iPhone Pro Max, I’m opening the Microsoft 365 Copilot app for the first time on this device. Now, hang on as I type in my user account again. There we go. And I’ll hit Next. I’ll tap Use Passkey, and there’s Face ID again. And I’m securely signed in to my Microsoft 365 Copilot work app on my brand-new device. So, the experience is seamless as I move between and update my devices. And if you have an Android phone, the process is just as similar using Google Password Manager and it works just as well on Chrome. So that was how, as a user, you register a passkey that is synced across devices. -Now let’s switch perspectives to a Microsoft Entra ID administrator. And I’ll walk through the steps for configuring passkeys. You’ll first start in the Microsoft Entra admin center Under Authentication Methods, you’ll find Passkeys right on top. If I click in, you can see that, in this case, the policy is enabled. And I have three groups targeted, one for all users, two others with specific controls for admin accounts. -The Passkey Profiles column is new and lets you assign different passkey profiles to each group. Let me show you those. I’ll move over to the Configure tab. Here, you can create new passkey profiles, or, as I’ll do in this case, you can click into each profile to see its settings. This one is for all users and set up for target types of Device-bound and Synced passkeys. Enforce Attestation is a higher bar for single device attestation and does not work with synced passkeys. This a great option for high-privileged accounts, like admins, but for regular users, you probably don’t need to enforce attestation. In fact, if I click on Enforce Attestation, the Synced passkey option is removed as a target type. So I’ll uncheck and then re-select the Synced option from the drop-down. -Now, if I choose the Target Specific Passkeys option, it allows me to either allow or block defined AAGUIDs, which refers to Authenticator Attestation Globally Unique Identifier that each provider will have. These, in fact, are the ones for Microsoft Authenticator mobile apps, so if I leave this checked, only these passkey providers will work. And I can add others if I want to. Unchecking Target Specific Passkeys, as this profile is currently configured, means that all passkey providers would be allowed. So that’s an example of a passkey profile that is intended for all user groups. -Let me show you a profile for an admin group. This one is set up for target types set to just Device-bound, and it’s targeting specific passkeys based on allowing only this defined AAGUID. By targeting different profiles to different user or admin groups, you can control who can use what type of passkey. As you move users to passkey authentication, your account recovery also requires a different approach that doesn’t use passwords, which we know is also a primary social engineering method used by attackers. -Here, a new recovery option using Verified ID in Microsoft Entra instead lets your users use a government-issued ID to prove they are who they say you are. Let me show you. In this example, because a user has lost their phone, they can’t authenticate into their account. To solve for this, I’ve started the sign-in process. And in Other Ways to Sign In, the user can select Recover Your Account. This lets you recover an account with Verified ID, which uses a trusted identity provider service that you can configure as a Microsoft Entra admin. The user can then prove their identity using a government-issued ID, along with a live selfie on their device. So these are the steps that a user needs to do to get a new Verified ID. And it just takes a moment. -From there, they can perform a Face Check to prove their identity with your organization. And at the end of this process, they are issued a Temporary Access Pass, which they’ll use to register a new passkey on their device, no password required. This both strengthens the recovery process to make it more resilient against account recovery attacks and helps reduce helpdesk costs. Additionally, just to be on the safe side for any suspected compromised account, we’ve also strengthened session revocation in Microsoft Entra where when risk is detected for a user account, the user account is set to high risk. -Then Conditional Access policies can automatically revoke user session and signs them out in real-time to prevent further risk, The high-risk user will then need to re-authenticate using their passkey, That will, in-turn, lower their risk level automatically, allowing them to re-gain access to work resources. This is more effective than previous options, as it happens in real-time, remediates user risk for passwordless accounts, and enables self-service recovery. -So passkeys in Microsoft Entra make it easier for you and your managed users to get the protection of phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication. To learn more, check out aka.ms/PasskeysInEntra And subscribe to Microsoft Mechanics for the latest tech updates. Thanks for watching!
Block all 365 apps except Outlook via CA
Trying to block 365 for a subset of users, except email. The old app-based CA rules made this easy. The new 'resource' based setup... I'm not even sure if it's possible. CoPilot just keeps telling me to use the old version of CA, because it hasn't clued into Microsoft's downgrade cycle. If I try to filter by resource attribute, I'm told I don't have permission to do so. I'm the global admin. Here's what searching for Outlook gives me and Exchange Advice? We ARE intune licensed, but i'm not sure App Protection Policies will help here. The intention is to block BYOD from accessing anything but Outlook / Exchange. That is, Mobile devices that aren't (whatever param I decide on)Beyond Visibility: Hybrid Identity Protection with Microsoft Entra & Defender for Identity
In a previous blog, we explored how Microsoft Entra and Defender for Identity form a powerful duo for hybrid identity protection. But visibility alone isn’t enough. To truly defend your organization, you need to operationalize that visibility—turning insights into action, and strategy into security outcomes. Let’s explore how to take your hybrid identity protection to the next level. From Detection to Response: Building a Unified Identity SOC Security teams often struggle with fragmented signals across cloud and on-prem environments. Defender for Identity and Entra solve this by feeding identity-based alerts into Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Sentinel, enabling: Centralized incident response: Investigate identity threats alongside endpoint, email, and cloud signals. Automated playbooks: Trigger actions like disabling accounts or enforcing stricter access policies. Advanced hunting: Use KQL queries to uncover stealthy attacks like domain dominance or golden ticket abuse. This unified approach transforms your SOC from reactive to proactive. Strengthening Identity Posture with Entra ID Protection Once threats are detected, Entra ID Protection helps you contain and prevent them: Risk-based Conditional Access: Automatically block or challenge risky sign-ins based on Defender for Identity signals. User risk remediation: Force password resets or MFA enrollment for compromised accounts. Policy tuning: Use insights from past incidents to refine access controls and reduce false positives. This adaptive security model ensures that your defenses evolve with the threat landscape. To learn more about these and additional policy-driven security mechanisms, please visit: Risk policies - Microsoft Entra ID Protection | Microsoft Learn Least Privilege at Scale with Entra ID Governance Identity protection isn’t just about stopping attacks—it’s about minimizing the blast radius. Entra ID Governance helps enforce least privilege by: Automating access reviews: Regularly audit who has access to sensitive resources. Just-in-time access: Grant temporary permissions only when needed. Entitlement management: Control access to apps and groups with policy-based workflows. By reducing unnecessary access, you make lateral movement harder for attackers—and easier for auditors. To learn more about least privilege, please visit: Understanding least privilege with Microsoft Entra ID Governance | Microsoft Learn Real-Time Insights with Microsoft Sentinel Sentinel supercharges your hybrid identity protection with: Custom dashboards: Visualize risky users, sign-in anomalies, and privilege escalations. Threat intelligence fusion: Correlate identity signals with external threat feeds. Data connectors: Stream Entra and Defender for Identity logs for deep analysis and long-term retention. This gives you the clarity to spot patterns and the context to act decisively. To learn more about Microsoft Sentinel, please visit: What is Microsoft Sentinel SIEM? | Microsoft Learn Next Steps: Operationalize Your Identity Strategy To move from visibility to action: Deploy Defender for Identity sensors across all domain controllers. Integrate with Microsoft 365 Defender and Sentinel for unified threat detection. Enable risk-based Conditional Access in Entra to respond to identity threats in real time. Implement least privilege policies using Entra ID Governance. Use Sentinel for advanced hunting and analytics to stay ahead of attackers. Final Thoughts Hybrid identity protection isn’t a checkbox—it’s a continuous journey. By operationalizing the integration between Microsoft Entra and Defender for Identity, you empower your security teams to detect, respond, and prevent identity threats with precision and speed.
