Forum Discussion
Password Expiration with AAD connect Password hash sync
I try to give you a detailed answer.
Until you have the EnforceCloudPasswordPolicyForPasswordSyncedUsers disabled (which is the default), an Azure AD user coming from on-premise AD (synced by AAD Connect) has its account password set to Never Expire.
"Password expiration policy
If a user is in the scope of password hash synchronization, by default the cloud account password is set to Never Expire.
You can continue to sign in to your cloud services by using a synchronized password that is expired in your on-premises environment. Your cloud password is updated the next time you change the password in the on-premises environment."
Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/hybrid/how-to-connect-password-hash-synchronization#public-preview-of-the-enforcecloudpasswordpolicyforpasswordsyncedusers-feature | Microsoft Docs
Once you enable the EnforceCloudPasswordPolicyForPasswordSyncedUsers feature and set the PasswordPolicies attribute to None (instead of DisablePasswordExpiration), the expiration time for an Azure AD user should be calculated referring to read-only attribute LastPasswordChangeTimestamp (you can retrieve it by using the Get-MsolUser cmdlet), depending on expiration policy.
Now if you have AAD Connect with password hash sync, same password expiration policy set on both Azure AD and on-premise AD (e.g. 90 days), every time a password is changed on-premise AD, pwdlastset attribute is updated, the password itself synced with Azure AD and the LastPasswordChangeTimestamp updates accordingly - so they both expires at same time (maybe few minutes off); if you also have the password writeback functionality in place (link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/concept-sspr-writeback | Microsoft Docs) the behavior described above works when the password is change from Azure AD and synced back to on-premise AD.
It should be right (please, can someone else confirm that ?)
I hope I was clear.
Bye,
Luca
lucafabbri365 Great explanation.
If a company usees Fine-grained Password Policy to apply different password expiration policies inside the same AD domain - would that still work out with Azure AD?
Hello KoflT,
yours is a good question.
Well, Fine-grained Password Policy is supported by Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS) for sure. Azure AD DS integrates with existing Azure AD tenant, but is a different service.
Definition
"Azure Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) provides managed domain services such as domain join, group policy, lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), and Kerberos / NTLM authentication. You use these domain services without the need to deploy, manage, and patch domain controllers (DCs) in the cloud."References
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/aadds-fgpp/ (Microsoft Azure)
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/overview#:~:text=Azure%20Active%20Directory%20Domain%20Services%20(AD%20DS)%20provides%20managed%20domain,(DCs)%20in%20the%20cloud. (Microsoft Docs)
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-domain-services/password-policy (Microsoft Docs)
Instead, we are speaking about password expiration on Azure AD tenant.
This post https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/5f10faf7-98ec-4681-96e9-4fc987a564e1/onpremise-password-policy-amp-azure-ad-password-policy?forum=WindowsAzureAD (Visual Studio forums) treats the same argument: basically, you can define a password policy per custom domain in Azure AD.
I think the logic is the same I described previously: it depends on the password policy set for the custom domain where Azure AD user belongs and the password policy set for the same user, on-premise: if they match the behavior is the same (password will expire at same time), otherwise they will have different expiration time.
Please, let me know if it's clear, or I can write down some practical examples.
Bye,
Luca