Microsoft 365 Hardening (Conditional Access Control)

365 hardening is our advanced Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) security service. It uses conditional access controls to define exactly who can access your 365 network and how they are allowed to do so.

Microsoft 365 has provided many benefits to businesses both small and large. The cloud-based nature of Microsoft 365 means it can be accessed anywhere, from any device and at any time, so long as there is a working internet connection. This is incredibly convenient, but as always, more convenience often also means more risk.

Relying simply on a username and password for security is not sufficient to secure your business-critical data.

At Carden IT Services, we can implement conditional access control for all clients that use Microsoft 365 services.

Just as showing a passport is a condition for getting on a plane, a conditional access control is a condition which must be met by a user before they can access your Microsoft 365 network. By restricting access to your sensitive data and networks to only certain devices, or only users from a certain location, you can have more granular control over who can access your data and how they can do so.

These conditions are managed using Azure Active Directory. This means that in order to implement them, your organisation must have an Azure Active Directory license in addition to a Microsoft 365 license.

Once we’ve set you up with an Azure Active Directory license, our team can discuss the conditions you wish to place on access to your Microsoft 365 resources and develop conditional access policies accordingly. The policies are flexible and can be amended as your business circumstances change.

Once we’ve set you up with an Azure Active Directory license, our team can discuss the conditions you wish to place on access to your Microsoft 365 resources and develop conditional access policies accordingly. The policies are flexible and can be amended as your business circumstances change.

Which Conditions Can You Set For Access?

• By User or By Group
  Administrators may tailor policies to individual users and groups, providing them full visibility over which team members have access to which resources.
• By IP Address
  Trusted IP address ranges can be created by organisations. Administrators can then restrict or allow traffic from whole countries/regions’ IP ranges. You could even restrict access exclusively to users on your office’s IP address and require users not on your premises to login via a VPN.
• By Device
  You can restrict access to users on specific devices, or devices in a particular state. If you use standardised hardware across your organisation, this can add an additional layer of security.
• Risk Detection
  By integrating with Azure AD Identity Protection, you can use real-time signals to identify suspicious sign-in attempts. You can then prompt these users for a multi-factor authentication code or review the sign in attempt manually.