Azure cloud conditional access policy.
Tags: azure, devops, cloud, security
Published: 2023-08-09 18:19:19

**What's it ? **

Azure AD Conditional Access brings signals together, to make decisions, and enforce organizational policies. Conditional Access is Microsoft's Zero Trust policy engine, taking signals from various sources into account when enforcing policy decisions.

Conditional Access policies at their simplest are **if-then** statements, if a user wants to access a resource, then they must complete an action. 
_Example: A payroll manager wants to access the payroll application and is required to do multifactor authentication to access it._
## Administrators are faced with two primary goals:

- Empower users to be productive wherever and whenever
- Protect the organization's assets
- Use Conditional Access policies to apply the right access controls when needed to keep your organization secure.
## Conditional Access takes signals from various sources into account when making access decisions.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/c4d9078ophg0fnm63xby.png)
### These signals include:

1. User or group membership

- Policies can be targeted to specific users and groups, giving administrators fine-grained control over access.

2. IP Location information

- Organizations can create trusted IP address ranges that can be used when making policy decisions.

- Administrators can specify entire countries/regions IP ranges to block or allow traffic from.
3. Device

- Users with devices of specific platforms or marked with a specific state can be used when enforcing Conditional Access policies.

- Use filters for devices to target policies to specific devices like privileged access workstations.
4. Application

- Users attempting to access specific applications can trigger different Conditional Access policies.

5. Real-time and calculated risk detection

- Signals integration with Azure AD Identity Protection allows Conditional Access policies to identify and remediate risky users and sign-in behavior.
6. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

- Enables user application access and sessions to be monitored and controlled in real time. This integration increases visibility and control over access to and activities done within your cloud environment.
### decisions for conditional access policy 

- Block access
Most restrictive decision

- Grant access
A less restrictive decision, can require one or more of the following options:
Require multifactor authentication
Require authentication strength
Require device to be marked as compliant
Require Hybrid Azure AD joined device
Require approved client app
Require app protection policy
Require password change
Require terms of use
## Commonly applied policies
Many organizations have common access concerns that Conditional Access policies can help with such as:

- Requiring multifactor authentication for users with administrative roles
- Requiring multifactor authentication for Azure management tasks
- Blocking sign-ins for users attempting to use legacy authentication protocols
- Requiring trusted locations for Azure AD Multifactor Authentication registration
- Blocking or granting access from specific locations
- Blocking risky sign-in behaviors
- Requiring organization-managed devices for specific applications
- Administrators can create policies from scratch or start from a template policy in the portal or using the Microsoft Graph API.
For more, checkout Microsoft documentation 
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/conditional-access/[](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/conditional-access/)