In fact, if there’s one thing you need to protect, it’s your administrators!

Whether it concerns authentication methods, third-party application permissions via APIs (allowing a third-party application to synchronize data with an external storage service, for example) or changing retention policies, an administrative action can significantly affect the data and security of the tenant on a larger scale. If it is necessary to make this point even more explicit, a Global Administrator has the ability to access all data or manage all the settings of Office 365, Windows 10, Azure AD… but also Azure!

What are the native functionalities in the Microsoft platform?

Which rights models within Microsoft 365?

To date, Microsoft 365 has two main levels of rights. These two levels schematically allow the delegation of administrative rights by adapting to different organisational models (small / medium / large, centralised / decentralised):

• Azure AD roles: Administration of Azure AD and Microsoft 365 services;
• RBAC roles: Administration of objects within services.

Level One: Using Azure AD roles to manage services

The person behind the opening of the tenant automatically takes over the role of General Administrator. He can then appoint other administrators to accompany him in his tasks. As far as possible, Global Admin’s rights should not be used in order to limit overexposure of the administration accounts. It is good practice to limit this general role to a maximum of 3-4 accounts. In addition, for almost all actions there is an equivalent service administration role (e.g. SharePoint Administrator, User Administrator, etc.).

These service administration roles are also known as Azure AD roles. Each service can be viewed as an Azure AD application. An administrator would thus be equivalent to the owner of the service in question. At the time of writing this article, Microsoft offers 59 different roles, which provides a good level of segregation of rights in most cases.

However, the default roles provide access to the entire Admin Service for the entire tenant and may in some cases provide access to the underlying data (e.g. for SharePoint Administrator, Exchange Administrator and User Administrator).

Figure 1 – Example of sensitive rights

In the case of advanced maturity, it is possible to go further in the segregation of rights by creating personalised Azure AD roles. In concrete terms, this means deciding what permissions this role has (e.g. “microsoft.directory/applications/create” allows you to create applications in Azure Active Directory).

The downside will be that it will be more complicated to audit the administration and that it will be necessary to monitor the evolution of services to ensure that permissions remain consistent with the needs of administrators.

Second level: Using the RBAC model to manage objects

Certain services such as Exchange Online, Intune, Security and Compliance Centres or Cloud App Security offer specific RBAC rights models.

As its name suggests, Role Based Access Control (RBAC), allows for the implementation of more refined permissions management; with the ability to define roles for defined perimeters (e.g. for certain user groups). For example, it will be possible to create “Helpdesk A” and “Helpdesk B” in Exchange Online to give support rights to two separate teams on a perimeter A and a perimeter B.

How to provision the accounts of administrators?

The first question is how to create an administrator’s identity. Two strategies are possible:

• The creation of an account in the organisation’s identity repository, which will then be synchronised with Azure AD (ex: wavestone.com);
• The creation of the account directly in Azure AD. This account will then be called “cloud-only” (example: wavestone.onmicrosoft.com).

Regardless of the administration role, it is recommended for a SaaS service such as Microsoft 365 that the account be located as close as possible to the administered resource. Here, this amounts to using cloud-only accounts. The objective is twofold: to protect against a possible unavailability or of a compromise of the organisation’s identity repository.

How to assign permissions?

The second question is how to assign the right privileges to the administrative roles created.

In the case of service administration

In order to assign an AAD role, it is possible to use 3 methods (via the portal or the corresponding PowerShell command):

• The Azure portal (portal.azure.com): this is the method that should be favoured, as it allows the association of rights as close as possible to the resources and the use of PIMs, which we will discuss in the rest of the article;
• The Microsoft 365 portal (admin.microsoft.com): it is possible to carry out the assignment of roles directly through the main administration portal. However, this method is not compatible with PIM;
• The use of third party IAM tools: these solutions now have connectors with Office 365 to perform identity and privilege provisioning. These solutions offer less granularity, are not compatible with PIM and are a source of common errors. For example, synchronisation is typically one-way, resulting in the administration account reappearing if it is only deleted in Azure AD.

Note that it is also now possible to assign an Azure AD role to a security group (Cloud only) via a preview feature. This may simplify certain administrative models, such as where the Unified Communications team needs the SharePoint Administrator role and Teams Administrator. However, be careful with the management of this group.

In the case of the administration of objects

For RBAC roles, the definition of roles is done directly in the administration platform of the service concerned. It is then possible to assign the role in question manually or to a security group, in the portal or via an IAM solution.

Figure 2 – Natives functionalities of the solution

How to build and implement your administration model?

What strategy to define your rights model?

The construction of a delegation model must be based on the principle of least privilege. The core of the work is to make an inventory of the cases of Office 365 administration usage and to match your teams with the available rights.

This can be an opportunity to rethink the organisation of teams dealing with the working environment. Two observations are quite significant:

• Mobile terminals and workstations are intended to be managed by unified solutions (UEM) such as Intune, Workspace One or MobileIron, and therefore by the same team.
• Security and compliance tools are increasingly integrated natively in Office 365. It is therefore necessary to break down the wall that existed between the workplace world and the security world, in order to create a team with the same ambition: to create and maintain a controlled and secure platform.

Office 365 has the particularity of bringing together a multitude of different services, such as file or information storage (SharePoint, OneDrive), communication tools (Exchange, Teams) but also security (Defender, Information Protection, etc.). It is therefore essential to group the services into categories and define a correspondence matrix between team and administration roles.

Concretely, we advise you first to use the default Azure AD roles for service administration, and then to define more granular roles with RBAC and custom roles.

It is also interesting to identify the most sensitive roles, such as those allowing access to data or security settings (for example: Global Admin, Exchange Admin, Security Administrator and Application Administration) in order to be able to adapt the security of these roles.

How to delegate administration rights on objects in a multi-entity context ?

Before talking about security in the strict sense of the word, there is another question. Although the configuration of services and security parameters can only be done centrally, local teams need to carry out support actions: creation or modification of an internal or guest account, resetting of authenticators, creation of a Microsoft 365 group or a distribution list, etc.

The service administration roles, the Azure AD roles, do not offer privilege segregation by perimeter; an Exchange Online administrator will therefore be able to handle all mailboxes. It will not be conceivable to give them in complex organisations or in regulated contexts. Several strategies are available, depending on the maturity and complexity of the organisation.

In the case of small structures, it is easiest to use the native functionalities:

• RBAC roles: RBAC Exchange and Intune roles generally provide the right level of granularity to manage objects in native portals;
• Administrative Units: Administrative Units, finally in GA since the end of September, are the equivalent of RBAC for Azure Active Directory. They take the form of containers in which an administrator can create or modify objects, which makes sense for support activities.

In the case of larger structures, good practice is not to manage objects (users, mailboxes, groups, SharePoint sites, etc.) directly in native portals. What is needed is an interface that allows all these objects to be managed, while taking into account the business logic and the target administration model. Below are three examples of interfaces:

• In-house development of a “Custom Automation Engine”: this interface will be decorrelated from the IAM and very often a large powershell / Graph API machine;
• Integration of a connector to the current IAM solution in order to present a complete management of the objects by disregarding their direct hosting;
• Investment in a SaaS Management Platform (SMP): software publishers have specialised in the creation of management tools for Office 365, combining object administration, licence management and security and operational supervision functions. Among these solutions, which are still relatively unknown, are ManageEngine, CoreView and Quadrotech.

Please note: this interface, dedicated to support teams, will be distinct from an interface open to all users allowing them to centrally create guest users, SharePoint sites, Teams, etc. In concrete terms, this second interface could be integrated with ITSM tools, SMP or even be developed based on Power Apps and Graph API.

How to protect access to these accounts ?

10 measures to secure administration accounts

Depending on the security licenses, mainly the EMS bundle, Microsoft provides a number of controls to secure administration accounts.

Most of these could also be obtained via third-party tools.

Basic measures to secure the administration account

1. A dedicated administrator account

An administrator must have an account dedicated to administration, different from the office automation account. It should be cloud-only where possible (e.g. wavestone.onmicrosoft.com).

2. Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication is no longer an option today, and even less so for administrators.

This measure is available for everyone, for all licences:

• Via MFA for Office 365 (also called MFA with per-person inheritance) which forces a challenge at every connection;
• Via Security Defaults which forces an additional factor to be registered for all users and imposes the MFA for administrators at each login;

It is also important to ensure that legacy authentication protocols that do not support MFA are disabled. These would allow single sign-on to be bypassed.

It will also make sense to limit the types of additional factors available; what is the point of securing administration accounts if the second factor is the administrator’s Gmail address.

Highly recommended security measures

3. Unlicensed Office 365 account

Without a licence, it will not be possible for an administrator to access the different services and data of the platform, or to have a mailbox.

Please note that some services, such as Power Apps or Power BI, require a licence to access the administration portal. In practice, it can be interesting to create a security group that allocates the necessary licences for administrators.

4. Conditional Access (with Azure AD P1)

Conditional access allows you to evaluate the context when accessing an Office 365 service and to authorise access accordingly. For example, access can be blocked depending on the type of workstation used (whether managed by the company or not), the network on which the user is connected, the application in question or the user’s administrative role.

In a Zero Trust logic, there should be no differentiation between the internal and external network, especially for administrators, but rather focus on the status of the workstation and the risk of connection.

5. Password Protection (with Azure AD P1)

Azure AD Password Protection provides controls over passwords. It will thus be possible to prohibit the use of a current password or a derivative (with a list predefined by Microsoft or maintained by the organisation).

A good practice is to apply this protection to all Cloud-only administration accounts as a minimum.

6. Azure AD Identity Protection (with Azure AD P2)

Azure AD Identity Protection adds a notion of risk in the evaluation of user access and behaviour. Concretely, it will be advisable to define the following policies;

• Risky users: Force password change for an administrator likely to be compromised (with a Medium or High risk);
• Risky sign-in: Forcing an MFA challenge during risky access (e.g. anonymous or unusual IP).

7. Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (with Azure AD P2):

Azure AD Privileged Identity Management is a service to control the assignment and use of administrative roles:

• Allocate just-in-time rights by giving an eligible role instead of a permanent one;
• Submit role activation to third party validation;
• Set up an end date for an administrative role;
• Force recertifications of administrators.

It will be relevant to distinguish the so-called sensitive roles from the others during implementation.

The monitoring of eligible administrators allows, as a bonus, to become aware of the real use of administration rights and therefore to clean up the list of administrators more easily.

It should be noted that the PIM functionalities have recently been extended to the different groups, which makes it possible to set up “Just-in-time” for more exotic cases such as RMS / AIP Super-Users.

To go even further

8. Supervision of administrator actions to detect abnormal behaviour

Once all these security measures are in place, all that remains is for you to implement supervision to detect non-compliance with the previous rules and abnormal behaviour.

And for this, nothing better than to refer to our article on the subject to understand the available logs.

9. Setting up a Privileged Access Workstation

Administration is by definition a critical action. It must be carried out within a perimeter of trust. The provision of PAW, or administration post, will enable us to achieve this objective.

The configuration of the administration station should be simple (no local administration rights, restricted Internet browsing, blocked USB ports, pre-installed PowerShell modules, etc.). But restricting the connection of an Office 365 administrator from this workstation may cause more problems. There are several possibilities for this:

• In a modern context, a simple answer is to rely on Microsoft tools: define an administration workstation profile in Intune and assign it to the administrators. With a conditional access rule, it is possible to require a compliant workstation when connecting.
• In a more traditional model, it is possible to set up an authentication silo with administrators and associated workstations. In this way, we would have a model similar to the third-party model well known to AD teams.
• Other approaches are also possible, even if more complex: association of a certificate and a reverse proxy or even a bastion.

10. Keep up to date with good practices and news

It cannot be repeated often enough that Office 365 is a Cloud platform and is constantly evolving. Keeping up to date will continue to increase its level of security over time.

Figure 3 – The security of accounts, measures that can be counted on the fingers of one hand

Focus on glass breaking accounts

A good practice in the administration of the Microsoft platform is the setting up of administrator accounts that allow control over the platform to be regained in the event of an incident.  These are called glass-breaking accounts. These accounts should allow full control over the Office 365 tenant and are therefore assigned the role of Global Administrator.

These accounts must be secure; however, we must not forget their specificity which consists in using them in the event of an incident. Thus, the security imposed on these accounts must remain compatible with the urgent nature of their use.  These accounts must therefore comply with the following recommendations:

• To be cloud-only accounts
• No MFA configured (or at least a third party MFA)
• Storage of the password in a safe which only identified members of the security team or Office 365 can access
• Setting up alerts to check that these accounts are not used outside of an incident procedure requiring the use of glass breakage.

It is also recommended not to use a specific naming convention for these accounts, they should not catch the eye of a possible attacker!

Conclusion

Security on Office 365 is based on technical measures to protect administrator accounts, as well as the implementation of a target administration model, which includes clear governance and processes, tools to implement this delegation of rights, and mechanisms to maintain it over time.

But whatever protection measures are implemented, security rests first and foremost with the administrators of the solution. Awareness raising and controls for administrators will be essential.

Administrators must bear in mind that their accounts give access to extremely sensitive information and actions: they are therefore the preferred target of hackers!

As O365 is constantly evolving, each new feature introduced by Microsoft may also bring with it its share of security problems that need to be studied and taken into account. Take the opportunity to update your documentation: O365 risk analysis, service configuration, delegation model…always without forgetting to allow your administrators to train!

Cet article How to manage administration in Microsoft 365? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

A l’heure du modern workplace, il est indispensable pour les équipes sécurité et conformité de connaître les capacités natives des plateformes de collaboration et de communication. Cette maîtrise permettra de définir une stratégie cohérente prenant en compte aussi bien les besoins de protection des données que les réglementations, l’urbanisation du système d’information et l’incontournable sujet de l’expérience utilisateur.

Pour les entreprises bénéficiant du plan de licences le plus élevé, Microsoft 365 E5, il n’y a pas de problème : toutes les fonctionnalités sont disponibles. Pour les autres, le sujet est autrement plus complexe.

Cet article est orienté pour les entreprises ayant plus de 300 collaborateurs. Pour les autres organisations (éducation, associations, petites et moyennes entreprises) les plans de licences sont légèrement différents, mais les informations ci-dessous restent applicables pour la plupart.

La partie 1 de cet article est disponible ici.

2/ S’approprier la logique de licensing

Pour les personnes profanes au licensing Microsoft, trois principes régissent l’attribution de licences en fonction de la population concernée :

• Un utilisateur interne d’un service ou bénéficiant indirectement dudit produit (ex : groupe dynamique, classification d’un site SharePoint, partage de tableaux de bords Power BI) doit avoir la licence requise ;
• La plupart des rôles d’administrations nécessitent la licence du service administré pour accéder au portail d’administration ou aux commandes PowerShell associées ;
• Les utilisateurs externes ou les utilisateurs invités (guest en anglais) n’ont pas besoin de licence spécifique pour collaborer sur du contenu Office 365. Cela est permis grâce aux capacités gratuites d’Azure AD. Néanmoins, si utilisateur invité est soumis à des fonctionnalités d’Azure AD Premium (P1 ou P2), un nombre suffisant de licences doit être disponible (à raison de 1 licence achetée pour 5 utilisateurs invités).

Les licences sont nominatives et s’entendent par utilisateur et par mois.

A noter qu’un même produit peut être disponible avec des fonctionnalités plus ou moins avancées en fonction du niveau des licences choisi. Un exemple récurrent concerne les journaux d’audits unifiés : ces logs sont conservés 90 jours avec des licences Office E1 ou E3 tandis qu’avec des licences Office E5 la durée est de 365 jours.

3/ Percer le mystère des plans de licences

Pour rappel, le modèle des licences Microsoft est constitué des éléments suivants :

• Plan de licences : Un plan définit les services souscrits à l’éditeur qui sont disponibles dans le tenant. La plupart du temps, un plan de licences sera un bundle collaboratif (Office 365), un bundle de sécurité (EMS) ou un package (Microsoft 365) ;
• Licence : Pour être considéré comme actif, et donc pouvoir se connecter au tenant, un utilisateur doit au moins posséder une licence ;
• Service : Un service est un produit, une fonctionnalité ou une capacité de Microsoft 365 nécessitant une licence. Cette licence peut provenir de plusieurs plans de licences différents : par exemple Office 365 E1 octroie SharePoint Online Plan 1 tandis qu’Ofice 365 E3 et E5 apportent SharePoint Online Plan 2 ;
• SKU : En langage Microsoft, ce terme tiré de la gestion des stocks désigne l’implémentation d’une licence pouvant être assignée à un utilisateur.

Les bundles collaboratifs Office 365 : des fonctionnalités de protection de la donnée et conformité incluses nativement

Les plans de licences collaboratifs, également appelés bundles Office 365, sont à la base du licensing Microsoft 365. Ces plans intègrent nativement des fonctionnalités croissantes de conformité. Les options de sécurité sont quant à elles assez limitées et doivent être souscrites indépendamment.

Le premier plan est Office 365 E1. Ce plan intègre l’ensemble des services bureautiques en mode web uniquement. Les produits de conformité et de sécurité correspondent au minimum vital de ce que l’on peut attendre d’un service SaaS d’entreprise aujourd’hui : Security Defaults (MFA basique), Journaux d’audits, Recherche de contenus et Etiquettes de rétention.

Office 365 E3 ajoute à E1 les clients lourds de la suite bureautique (désormais appelée Microsoft 365 Apps), ainsi que des fonctionnalités de protection de la donnée (Information Protection for Office 365 et Office DLP), Core eDiscovery et des politiques de rétention par défaut. Ce plan de licences est celui préféré par les entreprises aujourd’hui pour des utilisateurs standards.

Enfin, Office 365 E5 s’adresse plutôt à des populations particulières sur le plan bureautique avec la téléphonie, Power BI Pro et des statistiques sur l’utilisation de la suite Office 365. Ce plan intègre également la classification automatique (hors machine learning), des options de conformité pour les populations soumises à des réglementations (Records Management, Customer Key, Customer Lockbox, Information Barriers, Communications Compliance) et des options d’investigations avancées (Advanced eDiscovery et Data Investigations), ainsi qu’Office ATP et Office CAS.

Deux points importants à noter :

• Office DLP et AIP P1 peuvent être souscrits comme licences additionnelles pour des utilisateurs Office E1, afin d’avoir des fonctionnalités de protection de la donnée similaires à Office E3 ;
• L’option de Multi-Géo est une licence additionnelle, quel que soit le plan de licences choisi.

Les bundles de sécurité : des fonctionnalités de sécurité complémentaires

Introduit dès 2014, le bundle de sécurité EMS (Enterprise Mobility Suite, puis Enterprise Mobility + Security) intègre divers produits de sécurité. Ces produits ont pour vocation à maîtriser les identités, les terminaux en situation de mobilité et les applications accédant aux données Office 365.

• EMS E3 : Intune, Azure AD P1, AIP 1, Advanced Threat Analytics ;
• EMS E5 : Azure AD P2, AIP P2, Azure ATP et Microsoft Cloud App Security.

Aujourd’hui, EMS E3 se révèle indispensable pour des organisations faisant le choix de partir sur une stratégie « Full Microsoft ». En effet, Intune et Azure AD P1 offrent une stratégie cohérente pour gérer les accès à la plateforme Office 365. En revanche, peu d’organisations ont fait le choix de généraliser EMS E5, un bundle plutôt orienté pour des populations sensibles ou administrateurs, en raison d’un manque de cohérence entre les différents produits de sécurité inclus.

Les packages Microsoft 365 : une offre complète mais onéreuse

Annoncé en 2017, Microsoft 365 est désormais le produit phare de l’éditeur de Redmond. Ce plan de licences combine les fonctionnalités d’Office 365, de la suite EMS et de Windows 10 :

• Microsoft 365 E3 = Office 365 E3 + EMS E3 + Windows 10 E3 ;
• Microsoft 365 E5 = Office 365 E5 + EMS E5 + Windows 10 E5.

Contrairement à une idée répandue, et malgré les divers changements de noms introduits en 2020 (Office 365 Groups en Microsoft 365 Groups, Office Pro Plus en Microsoft 365 Apps), la marque Office 365 n’a pas disparu.

Il peut être opportun de noter, que Microsoft 365 E5 est le seul abonnement bureautique incluant les Trainable Classifiers (classification via Machine Learning), Insider Risk Management ou Safe Documents (extension de Windows Defender ATP pour scanner les documents ouverts en mode protégé).

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance et Sécurité : un tournant dans la gestion des licences sécurité et conformité

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance et Microsoft 365 Sécurité ont été introduits début 2020, afin de simplifier le licensing sécurité et conformité en regroupant les produits sous des plans de licences cohérents. Une bonne nouvelle, car la situation était devenue complexe entre les produits EMS et les produits de conformité historiques (ex : Advanced Data Governance et Advanced Data Compliance).

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance combine l’ensemble des fonctionnalités de protection de l’information, de gouvernance et d’investigation. En fonction des besoins, trois sous-bundles peuvent être envisagés :

• Microsoft 365 E5 Information Protection & Governance : AIP P2, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Advanced Retention Policies, Records Management, Advanced Office DLP et Advanced OME, Customer Key et Trainable Classifiers ;
• Microsoft 365 E5 Insider Risk Management : Insider Risk Management, Communications Compliance, Information Barriers, Customer Lockbox et PAM ;
• Microsoft 365 E5 eDiscovery & Audit : Advanced eDiscovery, Advanced Auditing et Data Investigations.

Présentées officiellement comme des extensions de Microsoft 365 E3, la documentation laisse entendre que les prérequis en termes de licences seraient moindres. L’extension Information Protection & Governance ne nécessiterait « que » AIP P1 et les Plans 2 d’Exchange Online et SharePoint Online (soit Office 365 E3).

Microsoft 365 E5 Sécurité combine Azure AD P2, la suite Advanced Threat Protection (Azure ATP, Office ATP, Windows Defender ATP) et Cloud App Security. Ce bundle sera intéressant pour les organisations peu dimensionnées pour gérer de nombreux outils de sécurité (MFA, EDR, AD Monitoring, Passerelle mail, CASB).

Focus sur les Firstline Workers

Les plans de licences Office 365 F3 et Microsoft 365 F1 et F3 sont destinés aux Firstline Workers :

• Microsoft 365 F1 est un plan de licences qui regroupe EMS E3, Teams et SharePoint (uniquement en partage et consommation de contenu) ;
• Microsoft 365 F3 combine EMS E3, Windows 10 E3 et Office 365 F3 ;
• Office 365 F3 est une version allégée de Office 365 E1, avec des fonctionnalités similaires (Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams et Power Platform principalement) mais du stockage nettement plus limité pour OneDrive et Exchange.

Microsoft définit cette population par « utilisateur sans terminal dédié, avec un usage occasionnel. » Concrètement, un terminal dédié est un matériel informatique ayant un écran de plus de 10,1 pouces, utilisé par un collaborateur à hauteur de plus de 60% de son temps de travail. Des exemples peuvent être des populations médicales, des vendeurs dans un magasin ou des ouvriers dans une usine.

Les licences Fx ne peuvent donc pas être utilisées pour optimiser les coûts de licensing pour des populations n’ayant pas de besoins avancés.

4/ Se doter des bons outils pour trouver les informations pertinentes

Il n’existe pas de cartographie officielle permettant de se retrouver facilement entre les produits et les niveaux de licences (E1, E3, E5, F1, F3, etc.), à croire que tout semble fait pour orienter les entreprises vers les licences les plus onéreuses. Il n’est pas donc étonnant de voir que des entreprises se soient spécialisées sur le segment très spécifique du licensing Microsoft (conseil en optimisation ou éditeurs de solution de gestion).

Comment se renseigner sur ce qui existe (sources officielles)

Concernant les licences liées aux produits conformité et sécurité, la référence la plus complète est la documentation “Conseils de licence Microsoft 365 pour la conformité & la sécurité“. Malheureusement, cette documentation officielle n’est pas exhaustive, il y manque par exemple :

• Les produits concernés par les préversions privées ou publiques. Par exemple, le nouvel Endpoint DLP nécessite par exemple une licence Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance ou Microsoft 365 E5 Information Protection & Governance ;
• Des détails concernant certains produits conformité. Par exemple, Office DLP est disponible avec une licence additionnelle ;
• Les informations liées aux fonctionnalités Azure Active Directory Premium P1 ou P2 et celles liées à Intune.

A noter, un tableau assez complet, disponible en .pdf et en .xlsx, propose un recoupage de cas d’usages et des licences conformité. Attention, ce tableau peut faire peur !

Concernant les licences sécurité, il n’existe pas encore de synthèse officielle équivalente. La documentation des produits (ex : Intune) et les pages d’informations sur le licensing (ex : Azure Active Directory restent les meilleures sources d’information.

Point important : la plupart des sources officielles précisent qu’elles ne constituent pas un engagement contractuel suffisant. Seul un échange avec le TAM Microsoft permettra de confirmer la disponibilité d’une licence spécifique et le prix associé.

Comment se renseigner sur ce qui existe (sources non-officielles)

En dehors de la documentation officielle, j’utilise deux sources assez intéressantes lorsque l’on évoque le sujet du licensing Microsoft 365 :

• Cartographie non-officielle des produits Microsoft 365, faite par Aaron Dinnage (Microsoft) : il s’agit du document disponible le plus complet sur le sujet ;
• Détails et prix publics (en dollars) des différents plans de licences Microsoft 365, faite par Dan Chemistruck (Infused Innovation).

Comment se renseigner sur ce qui est disponible dans le tenant

Il existe trois possibilités pour maîtriser les licences (unitaires, bundles ou packages) et les produits acquis dans un tenant Office 365.

La première et la plus simple consiste tout simplement à utiliser les informations disponibles dans les portails d’administration Office 365 ou Azure. Cependant, ces portails ne proposent que des fonctionnalités assez basiques : pas d’actions pour un grand nombre d’utilisateurs, un tableau de bord (licences acquises, utilisées et non conformes) global sans granularité par pays ou par entité, etc.

La deuxième option est d’acquérir un outil de gestion ou d’optimisation des licences (ex : ManageEngine, QuadroTech, CoreView). Ce type de solutions s’adresse plus au PME qu’aux grands groupes qui préfèrent la troisième option en raison d’économies d’échelle.

Cette dernière option consiste à développer un outil (à base de scripts PowerShell et d’API Microsoft Graph) d’attribution des licences et un tableau de bord (généralement sur Power BI). Ce choix permettra de palier les limites des outils natifs, mais également de déléguer la maîtrise des licences aux différents Local IT dans un contexte décentralisé.

Focus sur le développement : comment se retrouver parmi les noms

Le développement en lui-même ne présente pas de complexité particulière. En revanche, un problème courant apparaît très rapidement. Les noms des services obtenus par PowerShell et Graph API sont tout simplement incompréhensibles. Ces noms sont souvent issus de rachats ou de noms de projets internes Microsoft (ex : ADALLOM pour MCAS, RIGHTSMANAGEMENT pour AIP P1 ou encore SPE_E3 pour Microsoft 365 E3).

Par expérience, il est alors indispensable de garder à jour une liste de correspondances entre les noms des SKUs obtenus par scripting et les noms officiels :

–         La liste officielle Microsoft est malheureusement loin d’être exhaustive et n’est pas mise à jour régulièrement ;

–         Plusieurs listes non officielles sont maintenues tant bien que mal et disponibles sur Internet.

5/ Sept conseils pour définir sa stratégie de licensing sécurité et conformité

1. Identifier ses besoins en termes de sécurité (identité, menaces, terminaux, etc.) et conformité (protection de la donnée, conformité réglementaire, etc.) pour Office 365 ;
2. Formaliser l’inventaire de l’ensemble des outils de sécurité et de conformité liés au Digital Workplace disponibles dans l’entreprise (incluant passerelle mail, EDR, classification, DLP, etc.) ;
3. Formaliser une feuille de route pour l’outillage sécurité et conformité, dans une logique cohérente avec le modern workplace (rationalisation, sécurité native sans agents, zéro trust) ;
4. Définir un modèle de licences avec différents profils utilisateurs, conjointement avec les équipes architecte et workplace. Il peut être intéressant de privilégier des bundles en prenant en considération les besoins moyens et long terme. L’acquisition de licences unitaires (ou add-on) hors négociation globale se fera au prix fort ;
5. Anticiper les capacités de ciblage des produits. Certains produits (comme les fonctionnalités d’Azure Active Directory ou MCAS) s’adaptent difficilement à un modèle de licences compliqué dans un contexte multi-entités international ;
6. Activer ce qui est disponible sur opportunité dans les bundles acquis, en évitant les doublons avec les outils existants afin de ne pas brouiller les signaux ;
7. Faire de la veille. Les fonctionnalités associées à une licence peuvent évoluer à la suite d’un développement ou d’un rachat de solution tierce. Plus rare, Microsoft peut embarquer des fonctionnalités premium dans des plans basiques. Le centre de messages du portail d’administration et les blogs Sécurité et Conformité sont ici indispensables.

Pour aller plus loin, retrouvez dans cet article les différents sujets à traiter lors de la préparation de l’aventure Microsoft 365.

Cet article « Petit » guide pour se retrouver dans la jungle des licences sécurité et conformité Microsoft 365 – Partie 2 est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

In today’s modern workplace, it is essential for security and compliance teams to know the native capabilities of collaboration and communication platforms. This knowledge will enable them to define a coherent strategy that takes into account data protection needs as well as regulations, the urbanization of the information system and the unavoidable subject of user experience.

For companies  using the highest licensing plan, Microsoft 365 E5, there is no problem: all functionalities are available. For others, the subject is much more complex.

This article is oriented for companies with more than 300 employees. For other organizations (education, associations, small and medium enterprises) the license plans are slightly different, but the information below is still applicable for most of them.

Part 1 of this article is available here.

2/ Appropriating the licensing logic

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft licensing, there are three principles governing the allocation of licenses according to the population concerned:

• An internal user of a service or benefiting indirectly from the product (e.g. dynamic group, classification of a SharePoint site, sharing of Power BI dashboards) must have the required license;
• Most administration roles require the license of the managed service to access the administration portal or associated PowerShell commands;
• External users or guest users do not need a specific license to collaborate on Office 365 content. This is made possible by the free capabilities of Azure AD. However, if a guest user is subject to Azure AD Premium features (P1 or P2), a sufficient number of licenses must be available (1 license purchased for 5 guest users).

Licenses are nominative and are per user and per month.

Please note that the same product may be available with more or less advanced functionalities depending on the level of licenses chosen. A recurrent example concerns the unified audit logs: these logs are kept for 90 days with Office E1 or E3 licenses, whereas with Office E5 licenses the duration is 365 days.

3/ Unlocking the mystery of licensing plans

As a reminder, the Microsoft licensing model consists of the following elements:

• Licensing plan: A plan that defines the services available to the publisher in the tenant. Most of the time, a license plan will be a collaborative bundle (Office 365), a security bundle (EMS) or a package (Microsoft 365);
• License: To be considered as active, and thus be able to connect to the holder, a user must at least have a;
• Service: A service is a Microsoft 365 product, feature or capability that requires a license. This license can come from several different license plans: for example Office 365 E1 provides SharePoint Online Plan 1 while Ofice 365 E3 and E5 provide SharePoint Online Plan 2;
• SKU: In Microsoft language, this term from inventory management refers to the implementation of a license that can be assigned to a user.

Office 365 collaborative bundles: natively included data protection and compliance capabilities

Collaborative licensing plans, also known as Office 365 bundles, are the basis of Microsoft 365 licensing. These plans natively incorporate increasing compliance features. Security options, however, are quite limited and must be purchased independently.

The first plan is Office 365 E1. This plan integrates all office automation services in web mode only. The compliance and security products are the bare minimum of what can be expected from an enterprise SaaS service today: Security Defaults (basic MFA), Audit Logs, Content Search and Retention Tags.

Office 365 E3 adds the thick clients of the Office Suite (now called Microsoft 365 Apps), as well as data protection features (Information Protection for Office 365 and Office DLP), Core eDiscovery and default retention policies. This licensing plan is the preferred licensing plan for standard users in today’s enterprises.

Finally, Office 365 E5 is designed for special office populations with telephony, Power BI Pro and statistics on the use of the Office 365 suite. It also integrates automatic classification (outside machine learning), compliance options for populations subject to regulations (Records Management, Customer Key, Customer Lockbox, Information Barriers, Communications Compliance) and advanced investigation options (Advanced eDiscovery and Data Investigations), as well as Office ATP and Office CAS.

Two important points to note:

• Office DLP and AIP P1 can be purchased as additional licenses for Office E1 users, in order to have data protection features similar to Office E3;
• The Multi-Geo option is an additional license, regardless of the license plan chosen.

Security bundles: additional security features

Introduced in 2014, the EMS security bundle (Enterprise Mobility Suite, then Enterprise Mobility + Security) integrates various security products. These products are designed to control identities, mobile devices and applications accessing Office 365 data.

• EMS E3: Intune, Azure AD P1, AIP 1, Advanced Threat Analytics;
• EMS E5: Azure AD P2, AIP P2, Azure ATP and Microsoft Cloud App Security.

Today, EMS E3 is a must-have for organizations that choose to go with a “Full Microsoft” strategy. Intune and Azure AD P1 provide a consistent strategy for managing access to the Office 365 platform. On the other hand, few organizations have chosen to generalize EMS E5, a bundle rather oriented for sensitive populations or administrators, due to a lack of consistency between the different security products included.

Microsoft 365 packages: a complete but expensive offer

Announced in 2017, Microsoft 365 is now the flagship product of the Redmond-based publisher. This licensing plan combines the functionalities of Office 365, the EMS suite and Windows 10:

• Microsoft 365 E3 = Office 365 E3 + EMS E3 + Windows 10 E3;
• Microsoft 365 E5 = Office 365 E5 + EMS E5 + Windows 10 E5.

Contrary to popular belief, and despite the various name changes introduced in 2020 (Office 365 Groups to Microsoft 365 Groups, Office Pro Plus to Microsoft 365 Apps), the Office 365 brand has not disappeared.

We should note that Microsoft 365 E5 is the only office automation subscription that includes Trainable Classifiers (classification via Machine Learning), Insider Risk Management or Safe Documents (extension of Windows Defender ATP to scan open documents in protected mode).

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance and Security: A Turning Point in Security and Compliance License Management

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance and Microsoft 365 Security were introduced in early 2020 to simplify security and compliance licensing by grouping products under consistent licensing plans. This was good news, as the situation between EMS products and legacy compliance products (e.g. Advanced Data Governance and Advanced Data Compliance) had become increasingly complex

Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance combines the full range of information protection, governance and investigation capabilities. Depending on requirements, three sub-bundles can be considered:

• Microsoft 365 E5 Information Protection & Governance: AIP P2, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Advanced Retention Policies, Records Management, Advanced Office DLP and Advanced OME, Customer Key and Trainable Classifiers;
• Microsoft 365 E5 Insider Risk Management: Insider Risk Management, Communications Compliance, Information Barriers, Customer Lockbox and PAM;
• Microsoft 365 E5 eDiscovery & Audit: Advanced eDiscovery, Advanced Auditing and Data Investigations.

Officially presented as extensions to Microsoft 365 E3, the documentation suggests that the licensing requirements would be lower. The Information Protection & Governance extension would “only” require AIP P1 and Plans 2 for Exchange Online and SharePoint Online (i.e. Office 365 E3).

Microsoft 365 E5 Security combines Azure AD P2, the Advanced Threat Protection suite (Azure ATP, Office ATP, Windows Defender ATP) and Cloud App Security. This bundle will be interesting for organizations that are not large enough to manage many security tools (MFA, EDR, AD Monitoring, Mail Gateway, CASB).

Firstline Workers focus

The Office 365 F3 and Microsoft 365 F1 and F3 licensing plans are intended for Firstline Workers:

• Microsoft 365 F1 is a licensing plan that includes EMS E3, Teams and SharePoint (content sharing and consumption only);
• Microsoft 365 F3 combines EMS E3, Windows 10 E3 and Office 365 F3;
• Office 365 F3 is a lighter version of Office 365 E1, with similar functionality (mainly Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams and Power Platform) but much more limited storage for OneDrive and Exchange.

Microsoft defines this population as “users without a dedicated terminal, with occasional use.” Concretely, a dedicated terminal is a computer equipment with a screen of more than 10.1 inches, used by an employee for more than 60% of his working time. Examples can be medical populations, salespeople in a store, or workers in a factory.

Therefore, Fx licenses cannot be used to optimize licensing costs for populations with no advanced needs.

4/ Getting the right tools to find relevant information

There is no official roadmap that makes it easy to find one’s way between products and license levels (E1, E3, E5, F1, F3, etc.), and it seems that everything is done to steer companies towards the most expensive licenses. Therefore, it is not surprising to see companies specializing in the very specific Microsoft licensing segment (optimization consulting or management solution publishers).

How to find out what exists (official sources)

For licenses related to compliance and security products, the most comprehensive reference is the documentation “Microsoft 365 Compliance & Security Licensing Guidance“. Unfortunately, this official documentation is not exhaustive. For example, it is missing:

• Products concerned by private or public pre-versions. For example, the new Endpoint DLP requires a Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance or Microsoft 365 E5 Information Protection & Governance license;
• Details about some compliance products. For example, Office DLP is available with an additional license;
• Information related to Azure Active Directory Premium P1 or P2 features and information related to Intune.

Note that a fairly complete table, available in .pdf and .xlsx, provides a cross-reference of use cases and compliance licenses. Beware, this table can be scary!

There is not yet an equivalent official summary for security licenses. Product documentation (e.g. Intune) and licensing information pages (e.g. Azure Active Directory) remain the best sources of information.

Important point: most official sources specify that they do not constitute a sufficient contractual commitment. Only an exchange with the Microsoft TAM will confirm the availability of a specific license and the associated price.

How to find out what exists (unofficial sources)

Apart from the official documentation, I use two rather interesting sources when talking about Microsoft 365 licensing:

• Unofficial mapping of Microsoft 365 products, by Aaron Dinnage (Microsoft): this is the most complete document available on the subject;
• Details and public pricing (in dollars) of the various Microsoft 365 licensing plans, by Dan Chemistruck (Infused Innovation).

How to find out what’s available in the holder

There are three possibilities to master the licenses (unit licenses, bundles, or packages) and products acquired in an Office 365 holder.

The first and simplest is simply to use the information available in the Office 365 or Azure administration portals. However, these portals only offer basic functionalities: no actions for a large number of users, a global dashboard (licenses acquired, used and non-compliant) without granularity by country or entity, etc.

The second option is to acquire a license management or optimization tool (e.g., ManageEngine, QuadroTech, CoreView). This type of solution is more suited to SMBs than large corporations, which prefer the third option because of economies of scale.

The last option is to develop a licensing tool (based on PowerShell scripts and Microsoft Graph APIs) and a dashboard (usually on Power BI). This choice will make it possible not only to overcome the limitations of native tools, but also to delegate the control of licenses to the various IT localities in a decentralized context.

Focus on development: how to find your way among the names

The development itself is not particularly complex. On the other hand, a common problem appears very quickly – the names of the services obtained by PowerShell and Graph API are simply incomprehensible. These names often come from buyouts or internal Microsoft project names (e.g. ADALLOM for MCAS, RIGHTSMANAGEMENT for AIP P1 or SPE_E3 for Microsoft 365 E3).

By experience, it is then essential to keep an up-to-date list of correspondences between the SKU names obtained by scripting and the official names:

–        The official Microsoft list is unfortunately far from being exhaustive and is not regularly updated;

–        Several unofficial lists are maintained and available on the Internet.

5/ Seven tips to define your security and compliance licensing strategy

1. Identify your needs in terms of security (identity, threats, terminals, etc.) and compliance (data protection, regulatory compliance, etc.) for Office 365;
2. Formalize an inventory of all the security and compliance tools related to the Digital Workplace available in the enterprise (including mail gateway, EDR, classification, DLP, etc.);
3. Formalize a roadmap for security and compliance tools, consistent with the modern workplace (rationalization, native security without agents, zero trust);
4. Define a licensing model with different user profiles, in conjunction with the architectural and workplace teams. It can be interesting to favor bundles by considering medium- and long-term needs. The acquisition of unit licenses (or add-on) without global negotiation would be expensive;
5. Anticipate product targeting capabilities. Some products (such as the functionalities of Azure Active Directory or MCAS) are difficult to adapt to a complicated licensing model in an international multi-entity context;
6. Activate what is available on opportunity in the acquired bundles, avoiding duplication with existing tools in order to not interfere with the signals;
7. Keep watch. The functionalities associated with a license may evolve as a result of a development or purchase of a third-party solution. In some instances, although very rare,Microsoft will embed premium features in basic plans. The message center of the administration portal and the Security and Compliance blogs are indispensable here.

To go further, find in this article the different subjects to be dealt with during the preparation of the Microsoft 365 adventure.

Cet article A “SHORT” GUIDE TO THE JUNGLE OF MICROSOFT 365 SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE LICENSING – PART 2 est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

Who hasn’t already felt lost looking for information on Office 365 licensing? In this article, I will help you decipher the existing plans, as well as provide a few tips and reminders on recent announcements from the publisher.

In today’s modern workplace, it is essential for security and compliance teams to know the native capabilities of collaboration and communication platforms. This knowledge will enable them to define a coherent strategy that takes into account data protection needs as well as regulations, the urbanization of the information system and the unavoidable subject of user experience.

For companies  using the highest licensing plan, Microsoft 365 E5, there is no problem: all functionalities are available. For others, the subject is much more complex.

This article is oriented for companies with more than 300 employees. For other organizations (education, associations, small and medium enterprises) the license plans are slightly different, but the information below is still applicable for most of them.

1/ Understand the security and compliance services available

Historically focused on office automation services (with Microsoft Office) and collaboration services (with Exchange and SharePoint on-premise), Microsoft’s offering has evolved strongly by integrating not only codeless application development services (with the Power Platform), but also security and compliance bricks.

These can be grouped into seven categories:

• Security: Identity and Access Management, Endpoint Management and Threat Management;
• Compliance: Information Protection, Governance, Service Control, and Cloud Control.

Identity and access management

Azure Active Directory is the fundamental building block of Microsoft Cloud Services (Office 365, but also Azure IaaS and PaaS). It is not just a simple domain controller of the on-premises identity source in the Cloud; it is also an IAM service in its own right. Several licensing plans are available for Microsoft 365 use, whose main features are listed below:

• Azure Active Directory Basic for Office 365: Single Sign On, Manual Management of Users, Groups and Applications, Endpoint Registration, Security Defaults (basic security policies for users and administrators);
• Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 1 (or AAD P1): Azure MFA, Conditional Access, Proxy Application (exposure of on-premise applications on the Internet), Group Lifecycle (expiration, dynamic groups, classification), Advanced Password Protection (Cloud and on-premise), Integration with a third-party MFA or Identity Governance Solution;
• Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 2 (or AAD P2): Azure AD Identity Protection (assessment of connections and accounts at risk), Risk-based Conditional Access, Azure PIM (Privileged Account Management with Just-in-Time Access), Access Review, Entitlement Management (assignment of predefined rights on collaboration spaces to internal or external users).

Experience has shown that the Azure AD Premium P1 license is now a must for a number of companies. At a minimum, these companies must have the following two features: conditional access and group classification. Azure AD Premium P2 is intended for administrative populations in the first instance.

As a reminder, the functionalities available for adding or modifying objects (groups, users or terminals) vary according to the implementation mode chosen: Identity Federation, Password Hash Sync (PHS) and Pass Through Authentication (PTA).

Terminal management

Intune is the Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Access Management (MAM) solution offered by Microsoft.

The Intune MDM part is historically a mobile device management solution: deployment of applications or certificates on enrolled devices, hardening of parameters, fleet management, etc.

The Intune MAM part represents the functionalities that control the data within applications via apps protection policies. MAM can be used even in a BYOD context. It is important to note that third-party MDM solutions can be integrated with Intune MAM to control Microsoft 365 Apps (such as Office for iOS or Android), but the license will still be required to use the SDK’s functionalities.

In the context of modern management, the Intune MDM part of Intune is positioned as an Enpoint Unified Management (or UEM) solution to manage all devices (mobile or not) in a unified way. The ultimate goal is to replace the SCCM tool, also known as Configuration Manager, by positioning itself in direct competition with other MDM solutions already in place within companies.

Threat Management

The Microsoft Threat Protection suite brings together all the advanced threat prevention, detection, investigation and response capabilities of the Microsoft 365 environment: messaging, collaboration spaces, endpoints and identities.

Although the various components of the suite have historically been considered less efficient than other “pure players” in their respective segments, they have the undeniable advantage of offering unified management and correlation of indicators. However, this gap has been narrowing over the past two years, with Gartner even recognizing several components of the ATP Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) suite as leaders in their segments by the end of 2019.

There are three components:

• Office ATP: Solution to fight threats related to documents, emails and malicious links. While it is possible to add a third-party email gateway, Office ATP is the only advanced protection option for collaborative spaces (SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams);
• Windows Defender ATP: Redmond publisher’s BDU solution;
• Azure ATP: Detection and investigation solution against identity compromise, through the analysis of signals from the local Active Directory. Microsoft announced in February that it will end support for the legacy solution, Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), by January 2021.

Protection of information

Microsoft has recently grouped all data discovery, classification and protection functionalities under the Microsoft Data Protection Framework: Microsoft Information Protection.

At the base is the engine for identifying sensitive data. Microsoft’s engine is based on two elements:

• Sensitive Information Type (SIT): Predefined regular expressions (e.g. social security number or credit card) combined with keywords, document fingerprints (e.g. patent or form) or keyword dictionaries;
• Information Classifiers: Machine learning algorithms, with predefined or constructed models. Introduced this year and still in pre-version, the classifiers can only be used with Microsoft E5 licenses..

The current trend is to classify Office 365 data (emails, documents and now Power BI) using Azure Information Protection (or AIP). The choice of classification level can be done manually or automatically with the engine presented above. AIP has been gradually integrated into the Office 365 service package, under the name Information Protection for Office 365 (or unified classification). Although less necessary today, AIP uses the new solution as well as the non-Office 365 document coverage and classification bar in office applications.

It is also possible to classify a shared space (SharePoint site, Teams or Groups Office 365), but the classification of data and space is still decorrelated.

The actual protection of information consists of data encryption and restriction of rights (DRM). Microsoft’s proprietary protocol is Azure RMS, or Rights Management. Keys can be managed by Microsoft, in BYOK or Double Key Encryption (DKE) (HYOK equivalent for Unified Labeling presented in July 2020).

Azure RMS can be applied to data manually or by inheriting the classification level. The implementation may have a different name depending on the use case involved, but the mechanisms are identical:

• AIP or RMS for documents;
• Information Rights Management (or IRM) for SharePoint: Data downloaded from a list or library inherits protection consistent with the user’s rights;
• Office Message Encryption (or OME) for electronic messaging.

In addition to the above protection, it is also possible to apply shared space protection to harden access according to the chosen classification level, e.g. restricting endpoints or guest users.

In addition to the mechanisms attached to the data (the protection remains even when sharing or copying), it is possible to control the distribution of data through the following tools:

• Office DLP: control of the distribution of e-mails and documents;
• Communications DLP: instant messaging control;
• Cloud App Security: Extension of Office DLP capabilities to integrated SaaS applications;
• Windows Information Protection: equivalent of Intune MAM for Windows 10, aimed at separating business data from personal data;
• Windows Endpoint DLP: new DLP solution for Windows 10 presented in July 2020.

Finally, a discovery of the information can be made afterwards to locate and correct the level of protection if necessary. Again, a different solution must be used depending on the use case:

• AIP Scanner: search and classification of data on on-premises directories;
• Cloud App Security: search and classification of data on Cloud spaces;
• Windows Defender ATP: search and classification of data on Windows 10;
• eDiscovery: Cloud data search (by hijacking the original functionality).

The SDK Microsoft Information Protection can be used by third-party applications to apply classification or protection to data, or simply consume protected data.

As you can see, there are a number of tools with different names to protect organizations’ data. The important thing to remember is that users will only be directly confronted with classification and protection.

Governance

The year 2020 may be selected as the year of compliance for Office 365. Microsoft has reorganized existing products and introduced new ones to address various HR and regulatory risks. All these products are grouped together in the new Compliance Center, which replaces the equivalent part in the Security & Compliance Center.

The first group of these products is related to information retention. Retention policies (retention, legal registration, deletion, etc.) are defined via retention labels applied to a piece of data or a shared space. Labeling can be done manually, by default on containers (e.g. user mailboxes or SharePoint sites), or automatically, in the same way as privacy labels.

The products related to traceability and audit of the holder are then found. By design, the Unified audit logs can trace the actions of users or administrators. These logs, although very complete, are not exhaustive and are regularly completed. In order to increase the 90-day retention period of the unified logs, last year Microsoft introduced Advanced auditing, which offers a retention period of up to one year and more complete logs (such as all accesses to a mailbox).

In addition to logging, four products offer investigation possibilities:

• Core eDiscovery allows to extract content according to a query (e.g.: messages sent by a user containing this or that information);
• Advanced eDiscovery is an advanced feature to filter the most relevant content and provide visualization possibilities on the results;
• Microsoft Data Investigations,still in pre-version, is a clone of Advanced eDiscovery allowing to trace the context that may have led to a data leak;
• Data Subject Requestwas introduced when the GDPR came into force, in order to identify and export data related to a natural person. Again, this is a clone of Core eDiscovery, which can be searched in this context.

Note that the eDiscovery functionalities of Exchange Online (Hold, search, etc.) will gradually be phased out in favor of those of the Compliance Center.

Finally, Microsoft recently presented a whole range of products to combat internal risks (insider trading, data leakage by users on departure, discrimination, illegitimate access to data, etc.). In concrete terms, these products are designed to implement and automate existing principles in organizations’ existing HR, legal and business policies:

• Insider Risk Management is a feature to raise alerts in case of suspicious actions performed by an internal user (e.g. massive downloads performed by a user on departure, breach of security policy). The product is centered around the following axes: alert, investigation, automatic or manual remediation;
• Information Barriers allows to regulate exchanges (OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams) between internal persons, in order to technically force bans on content exchanges between entities due to regulatory requirements;
• Communications Compliance extends Office DLP’s functionality by enabling alerts when inadequate communication is detected (Teams, Mail or Yammer), such as regulatory non-compliance, non-compliance with an internal policy (e.g. harassment) or exchanges around a specific project;
• Privileged Access Management (PAM) is Azure PIM’s counterpart for operational administrative tasks. In order to perform a task, a person will have to request a privilege elevation for a defined perimeter and time;
• Customer Lockbox : is the name of the internal Microsoft process that allows a support person to access data within an organization. Customer Lockbox adds a validation step by the customer in question. In practice, this product ensures that a Microsoft employee does not inadvertently modify data, but does not protect against government requests. On the latter subject, Microsoft regularly publishes statistics.

Most of these products are still in pre-version. There is still very little feedback from the field on these solutions, which are expected to become more mature.

Control of services

In addition to the products described in the previous chapter, Microsoft provides organizations with two additional tools to comply with local regulations.

First, Customer Key allows an organization to add an overlay of encryption at the application level (Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online and Teams), that manages the lifecycle of the keys used. This overlay is in addition to the encryption applied by construction to data at rest on Microsoft servers. However, be careful not to lose the keys, which would lead to a total loss of data.

Secondly, Multi-geo‘s functionalities ensure that data is kept at rest in a given geographical area. The challenge with this functionality is to be able to differentiate between personal and shared spaces according to the target location.

Mastering the Cloud

With Cloud App Security, Microsoft has its Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): fighting against Shadow IT (using the APIs of supervised solutions or SaaS applications not managed via proxy log analysis), Data Protection, Detection of abnormal behavior and Analysis of SaaS application compliance.

Again, three levels of functionality are available:

• Cloud App Discovery: Accessible with Azure AD P1, this level allows you to take advantage of Shadow IT;
• Office 365 Cloud App Security: Accessible with an Office E5 license, this is an intermediate level allowing you to benefit from degraded functionalities limited to Office 365;
• Microsoft Cloud App Security: Highest level of CASB functionality.

It is important to remember here that Azure AD P1 will be required if one wishes to implement conditional access policies for connected applications (including Office 365).

With the Governance features presented above, Cloud App Security is the least exploited brick today, mainly due to the excessively high level of licensing.

Find the rest of this writing in the article “A short guide to find your way through the jungle of Microsoft 365 security and compliance licenses – Part 2”.

Cet article A “SHORT” GUIDE TO THE JUNGLE OF MICROSOFT 365 SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE LICENSING – PART 1 est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

Cet article « Petit » guide pour se retrouver dans la jungle des licences sécurité et conformité Microsoft 365 – Partie 1 est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

For those who have not yet taken the plunge (mainly ETIs and the public sector), it is essential to start thinking about Cloud collaboration and communication platforms as soon as possible. This, in order to be able to ensure continuity of service in case of force majeure (cyber attack, natural disaster or even pandemic), or even to envisage a more consequent migration.

For this Digital Workplace platform, a close collaboration between the security team and the workplace will be a prerequisite!

In this article, I will share with you some feedbacks on the deployment of Office 365, Microsoft’s solution that is becoming increasingly popular with the companies we support.

There is a lot of interesting documentation on the subject on the Internet (“Top 10 best practices” or “3 good reasons to connect the xxx application to ensure your security”). Microsoft summarizes some of these good practices in these two articles:

• Security roadmap – Top priorities for the first 30 days, 90 days, and beyond
• Top 10 ways to secure Microsoft 365 for business plans

Today, I am not going to repeat here a non-exhaustive list of these good practices, but rather to remind you of six points of attention when opening such a service.

1st point: Building the safety standard, a pillar of the future relationship between the safety and workplace teams.

As with any project of this type, the first step is to assess the potential of the service and see how it can meet the initial need, through the development of a business case. The possibilities offered by Office 365 are numerous: office automation, instant messaging or email, data visualization, development of applications without code, etc.

As far as cybersecurity teams are concerned, there are two choices: to oppose this migration because of the risks linked to the American Cloud or to support the reflection to create new secure uses.

In the vast majority of cases, the second choice is preferred. A tripartite relationship then begins, between the workplace teams, security and architects, with the aim of building a service for the users. A result of this step could be the development of a security standard, resulting from a risk analysis, defining the services used and with the associated configuration.

Among the issues to be addressed are generally the following three themes:

• What uses should be offered to people in a situation of mobility? With what authentication?
• What new services to offer with the possibilities of integration with APIs?
• How to share documents with external users?

The current trend is to provide answers with a “Zero Trust” approach. Any deviation from the defined safety standard will have to be detected, thanks to the implementation of dashboards and supervision. The adage “Trust does not exclude control” has never made more sense.

This reflection may even be an opportunity to ask fundamental questions in order to lay a coherent foundation for the working environment. For example, why leave email, a 30-year-old system, open to everything and externally block my Teams and SharePoint shares? Improving the user experience can only be achieved by standardizing security practices.

2nd point: Data protection, a subject with the wind in its sails

Parallel to the construction of the service, comes the subject of the data that will be used in the tenant. For this, two simple questions must find answers (often complex).

How do I protect my data?

Today, unstructured data protection strategies are based on a common basis: the linking of data to a level of sensitivity. This correspondence leads to protection measures to be put in place:

• – Encryption with keys controlled by the CSP or the organisation;
• – Restriction of rights (or DRM);
• – Conditional access with multi-factor authentication;
• – Data Leakage Protection (or DLP).

In order not to over-protect data and thus avoid undermining the user experience, encryption and rights restriction can be reserved for the most critical data. Other data will still remain under control using more traditional measures, such as end-to-end encryption and exposure control.

A key factor for such a project will be to turn it into a real business project, with a comprehensive awareness programme dedicated to classification.

How to remain compliant with the regulations?

An organisation may be subject to local, implementation-related and sector-specific regulations, depending on its activities.

These regulations and directives in some cases impose real obstacles that need to be removed at the outset of the project: data retention, legal archiving, geolocation, judicial investigation, requests related to personal data.

Let’s take a concrete example: Russia. With the law on personal data of 2015, the national regulatory authority imposes the obligation to keep the source (called primary database) of its citizens’ data on Russian soil. In practice, this means that the Active Directory (primary base of corporate identities) of the Russian entity must remain Russian. From there, the information can be synchronized with the GAL (Global Access List) and Azure Active Directory.

The thorny issue of stock management

What to do with the data already existing? This is a complex issue, especially if the opening of a Cloud collaboration solution is linked to the decommissioning of existing file servers.

First of all, there is a technical question. Will the company’s network be able to support massive migrations of .pst and documents? In particular, it will not necessarily be useful to migrate data that does not comply with the retention policy.

Secondly, historical data may have heterogeneous levels of sensitivity and be subject to various regulations. A trade-off will be necessary to arbitrate between local data retention, risk acceptance and a broad classification project before or after migration.

3rd point: The Target Operating Model, guaranteeing the preservation of security over time

The operational model of a service such as Office 365 defines the responsibilities of the players (administrators, support staff, etc.) and the principles of object management. It is complementary to the security standard mentioned above, providing an operational vision.

The TOM must be drawn up prior to the opening of the service and updated regularly. It must include at least the following subjects.

A model of administration

Microsoft offers by default about 50 administration roles, not counting the RBAC roles of services (e.g. Exchange and Intune). A relevant use of these roles and custom roles will help to avoid having too many General Administrators and to follow the principle of least privilege. The implementation of Just-in-Time access will moreover make it possible to monitor the actual use of roles, while reinforcing security.

A semi-architectural / semi-security community

Like any SaaS platform, Microsoft regularly upgrades the functionalities of its collaborative suite. The mission of this community will be to monitor trends, in order to master new uses and keep control of the tenant considering the evolutions.

The life cycle of shared identities and spaces

If shared spaces (Teams, SharePoint) are not managed freely, this can lead to an explosion in the number of spaces that do not comply with the security standard. The reports of the editors of Data Discovery solutions are quite striking. To avoid this, it is necessary to establish a life cycle for shared spaces. These rules can include a naming convention, retention policies, a lifespan, principles for rights management.

The establishment of a single portal for the creation of these spaces will make it possible to implement these good practices, while promoting the user experience.

Similarly, a life cycle for Azure AD objects (including guest users, security groups, Office 365 groups and applications) must be defined and equipped. Here are two examples that deserve to be addressed: the delegation of APIs is left open and leaves the door open to massive data leaks; users invited to collaborate are never deleted. For this, two strategies are possible:

If shared spaces (Teams, SharePoint) are not managed freely, this can lead to an explosion in the number of spaces that do not comply with the security standard. The reports of the editors of Data Discovery solutions are quite striking. To avoid this, it is necessary to establish a life cycle for shared spaces. These rules can include a naming convention, retention policies, a lifespan, principles for rights management.

The establishment of a single portal for the creation of these spaces will make it possible to implement these good practices, while promoting the user experience.

Similarly, a life cycle for Azure AD objects (including guest users, security groups, Office 365 groups and applications) must be defined and equipped. Here are two examples that deserve to be addressed: the delegation of APIs is left open and leaves the door open to massive data leaks; users invited to collaborate are never deleted. For this, two strategies are possible:

• #1 – Creation of a Custom Automation Engine decorrelated from the IAM, via an in-house application developed in PowerShell ;
• #2 – Integration of a Powershell / Graph API connector to the IAM solution in place in order to present a complete management of the objects, disregarding their direct hosting.

4th point: take a fresh look at the subject of user identity

Indeed, the subject of identity is a pillar of SaaS!  So, take the time to consider all the possibilities and risks of SaaS Identity Providers (or IdPs). In particular, it is unthinkable in 2020 to consider Azure Active Directory as a simple Domain Controller in the Cloud.

Three approaches are possible for the source of identities accessing Office 365.

The dissociation of identities, a quick-win but complicated from a user’s point of view

It is possible to dissociate the local and Cloud identities if the local DA is no longer available or to decorate the Cloud workspace from the historical IS. This scenario is obviously not in favour of an optimal experience, but may be a valuable asset in the event of a crisis.

The use of local identity in the Cloud, a classic strategy

In order to reconcile security and user experience, it is necessary to use the same identity between the legacy applications and this new service. For this, three technical scenarios are available:

• Identity Federation : This historic solution is widely used by large French companies that are reluctant to host passwords in the Cloud and wish to have SSO;
• Password Hash Sync (PHS): This solution, recommended by Microsoft and the British equivalent of ANSSI, is implemented by the vast majority of Microsoft customers. This solution can also be used as a back-up when the federation service is no longer available;
• Direct Authentication (Password Through Authentication or PTA): This solution provides the best user experience but has the disadvantage of passing the password through Azure AD.

Migrating one’s identity repository to the Cloud, a longer-term vision

Before or after migration, it may be appropriate to consider fully migrating the source of identities into the Cloud (whether Azure AD or a third party solution), in order to take advantage of the new possibilities. There are still several prerequisites that need to be lifted, such as printer, GPO and terminal management.

5th point: Gradually open up services to encourage controlled adoption

It is always easier to open a new service than to go back for safety reasons. Massively opening the different services of the collaborative suite has the advantage of offering a maximum number of uses cases but can cause several side effects.

First of all, services that are not officially supported and left in the hands of users for testing purposes represent a definite risk. They need to be configured and hardened. In some cases, it may even be preferable to disable the corresponding licenses.

Secondly, a controlled launch of the tools will help control costs during the first months or years of the transition. As Microsoft licences represent a certain load, it is possible to optimize unused licences.

Change management is also a key aspect to consider; to promote the user experience, of course, but also to promote data security. It is essential to have a clearly defined roadmap and user journey. Accompanied adoption will lay the foundations for proper governance of shared spaces and data (both in terms of exposure and protection).

It will be useful to consider creating a community of evangelists and users in order to maintain momentum in the adoption of the new functionalities brought by Microsoft. A uservoice system could be an asset; the ideal would be to listen to the needs of users and prioritise future openings.

6th and last point: Licences, the lifeblood of Office 365 and its security

SaaS solutions are generally subject to a monthly invoiced licensing model. The choice of Microsoft 365 licences must be the result of a global reflection. It cannot remain the prerogative of workplace teams and be determined solely by the need for collaboration and communication.

Indeed, the choice of licensing level will condition the security strategy of the tenant. This choice will have a wider impact on the strategy for securing the work environment. Indeed, Microsoft is increasingly positioning itself as a challenger to security solution providers, being the only one to offer such a complete suite.

The licensing of security options must be dealt with at the start of the project and at each renewal. It will be cheaper to include a licensing package from the outset than to order AAD P1 licences on an emergency basis to cover an unforeseen need for conditional access.

In this strategy to be defined, it may be appropriate to target individuals to adapt the security requirements to their profile (VIP, admin, medical population, etc.).

This approach, presented here for Office 365, can be generalised to any SaaS (Solution as a Service) service, or even IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or PaaS (Platform as a Service) service.

Cet article Migrate your work environment to Office 365 with confidence est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

Several topics must be addressed when securing Office 365  including the need to be able to track actions to detect illicit behaviour or trace the cause of an incident.

In France, however, many companies have difficulty consolidating logs and defining supervision use cases. Mastering logging must be at the heart of this approach.

Supervision of administrative actions is a necessity

For this logging decryption, let’s take the case of the platform administrators.

As with other SaaS solutions (Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce, etc.), the breach of data integrity or confidentiality following an error or malicious action by a company administrator is one of the major risks identified by our customers.

By definition, Office 365 administrators have high privileges:

• Configuration of the various services – or workloads – and APIs;
• Managing permissions on OneDrive and user mailboxes;
• Management of the life cycle of collaboration spaces.

It is easy to imagine the disastrous consequences that could result from the malicious or uncontrolled use of these privileges. Indeed, settings such as SharePoint Online external sharing, API permissions or email configuration could become significant data leakage vectors.

On-premise IT best-practices (lifecycle, least privilege principle, rights segmentation, strong authentication, just-in-time access, etc.) must also be applied in the Cloud. The Cloud must be mastered and controlled.

However, the implementation of good practices, although necessary, is not enough. Indeed, they do not guarantee that  administrators won’t carry out actions that compromise the level of security. One can therefore naturally wonder how it would be possible to audit the actions carried out and raise alerts if necessary.

What are the means provided by Microsoft? How can we prevent a malicious person from covering his tracks (which would make an attack more difficult to detect and reconstruct)?

To illustrate the different possibilities, we will follow the four examples below:

Figure 1 – Examples of configuration changes that may affect safety

What logs are available?

For historical and technical reasons, Office 365 inherently has several log sources: Unified Audit Logs, Exchange Logs and Azure Logs. These sources are complementary and must be analysed together in order to have an exhaustive view of the administrative actions performed.

Unified Audit Logs: unified logging of the different services

The most commonly cited and used source of logs is the “Unified Audit Logs”. These logs centralise the traces of users and administrators for all the platform’s services: SharePoint Online, Azure AD, Exchange Online, Teams, Power Platforms. Microsoft is progressively integrating the different sources and continues to add new logs.

To come back to our concrete examples, the interesting logs are:

• SharePoint Online External Sharing Policy Change: SharingPolicyChanged
• Assigning rights to a One Drive: SiteCollectionAdminAdded
• Assigning rights to a mailbox: AddMailboxPermission
• Changing an Administration Role: AddMembertoRole

These logs are accessible and exportable via the Compliance and Security Centers, the Office 365 Management and PowerShell APIs (via the Search-UnifiedAuditLog cmdlet). Note that logging must be enabled via the Compliance Center or PowerShell to be able to log and search.

It is possible to directly configure alerts related to the occurrence of certain logs in the Security and Compliance Centers.

Exchange Logs: logging of the messaging infrastructure

The second interesting source of logs is the “Exchange Logs“. These logs provide information about usage and administrative actions performed on the Exchange Online service as well as on personal or shared mailboxes. Two types of logs can be distinguished:

• Administrator Audit Logs: Service or mailbox administration logs (e.g. changing a user’s permissions, changing the retention time of a mailbox log etc.).
• Mailbox Audit Logs: Logs of use of a mailbox by the main user, a delegated user or a service administrator (e.g.: accessing the mailbox, sending an email in place of the main user, moving an item into a folder, permanent deletion, etc.).

To come back to our concrete examples, the logs that will interest us here are:

• Assigning rights to a mailbox: AddMailboxPermission
• Access to a folder or a mailbox: FolderBind (not enabled by default):
• Access to a mail: MailItemAccessed (only for users with an E5 license)

To go further with Administrator Audit Logs

Administrator Audit Logs are generated for any Exchange administration action that can be linked to a PowerShell cmdlet other than Get, Search or Test. These logs are linked to the Unified Logs and can be used in the Exchange Administration Center, Security and Compliance Centers, Office 365 Management and PowerShell APIs.

To go further with Mailbox Audit Logs

Mailbox Audit Logs are the only category of logs to be configurable (perimeter and granularity). These logs allow tracing of the actions performed by an owner, a delegate (user with permissions) and an admin (access via eDiscovery tools).

Since January 2019, the logging of Mailbox Audit Logs is enabled by default for all Office 365 tenants. To date, if logging is enabled by default, all mailboxes are audited (even if the “-AuditDisabled” parameter is set to “True”). The only way not to log the actions of a mailbox is to implement a by-pass rule with “Set-MailboxAuditBypassAssociation”.

However, it should be noted that some actions are not audited by default, such as the access of a delegate or an admin to a user’s mailbox. It is therefore essential to analyse the logs to be activated, during the initial configuration of the service.

Depending on the license level and configuration, these logs can be linked to the Unified Logs and be used in the Exchange Administration Center, the Office 365 Management and PowerShell APIs or the Security and Compliance Centers.

Azure Logs and Reports: Azure Active Directory Logging

The last, but not least important source of logs are the “Azure AD logs”. These logs provide complete traces of the Office 365 identity brick and the associated administration actions. Several categories of logs and reports are available:

• Azure Audit Logs: Logs for the administration of the identification brick or modification of items (e.g. assigning the “SharePoint Administrator” role, creating a security user or group, authorising an API, configuring guest users, etc.).
• Azure Sign-in Logs: Logs for connecting to an Office 365 service (or to applications / APIs based on Azure AD) with information regarding the connection chain (e.g. protocol, IP address, terminal, etc.).
• Risky Sign-in: Connection reports with indicators related to suspicious connections.

These logs and reports are accessible and exportable via the Azure portal, the Graph or Azure Management and PowerShell APIs. Some of the logs directly related to Office 365 are also found in the Unified Audit Logs.

To come back to our concrete examples, the interesting logs are:

• Modification of an administration role: AddMembertoRole

Figure 2 – Summary of Office 365 Logs Features

In summary, the Unified Audit Logs provide a consolidated view of the different services of Office 365, but some information may be missing. It will be necessary to ensure that the required logs are present, and then to investigate further into the logs and reports of Exchange or Azure.

What is the retention period for the various Office 365 logs?

Once the proper logs have been identified, the challenge of retention arises. How can you be sure that the logs are well preserved without being altered, for as long as is required by the company’s security policy and various regulations, such as the anti-terrorist law or the GDPR?

By construction, and contrary to Exchange and SharePoint on-premise solutions, all the logs mentioned above are unalterable – that is to say, they cannot be modified or deleted by the company administrators. Furthermore, the default retention periods defined by default cannot be modified (i.e. 90 days for Office 365 and 7 logs or 30 days for Azure logs with standard licenses). With one exception, an Exchange administrator has the ability to delete the logs from mailboxes by changing the associated retention time.

If we go back to our examples, we could imagine a malicious administrator giving himself rights to access a mailbox, then look at the mails and erase the access logs by setting a zero-retention time. In this case, only the privilege elevation made in the Administrator Audit Logs would be retained.

In order to comply with security or regulatory requirements, it may also be necessary to ensure that the logs of the various departments are kept for more than 7, 30 or 90 days.

3 steps to implement relevant logging within Office 365

1. Definition and activation of the necessary logs: Unified Audit Logs may not be sufficient (monitoring of the Office 365 and Azure AD APIs, logging of administrator access to mailboxes, etc.);
2. Configuration of an automatic export of the identified logs to an external storage or an independent SIEM (via PowerShell or the API Management);
3. Monitoring the status of the tenant: implementing a dashboard of the tenant’s settings configuring alerts related to a change in log configuration (via the Security or Compliance Center, the Office 365 Management or PowerShell APIs), such as disabling Unified logs or a change in the retention of mailbox logs.

Figure 3 – Good Practices for Office 365 Logging

After carrying out these three actions, the company will have the necessary information to audit the tenant’s use and administration actions. However, this does not yet address the larger need for supervision of administrators. It may be useful to set up alerts (via the Security or Compliance Center or specialised third-party tools).

1. (To go further) Implementation of basic supervision: definition of general security detection scenarios, identification of the logs concerned, activation of the associated alert in the Security or Compliance Centers;
2. (To go even further) Setting up advanced supervision: identification of scenarios related to a business context, implementation, definition of the associated governance, continuous improvement.

What tools should be used to analyze the logs? Which detection scenarios should be prioritised? What governance should be put in place to define, implement and monitor alerts? These are all questions that need to be addressed in the implementation of the collaboration platform supervision.

It will also be necessary to take into account the regular changes made by Microsoft on these services, as well as on the structure of logs and APIs, especially since the preview and general availability functionalities coexist.

Cet article Logging of Office 365: a Case Study with Administrators est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

This reflection should cover the main risks of data leakage and access to data by administrators, Microsoft and third parties or applications.

A new governance model imposed by Microsoft

Office 365 is a SaaS communication and collaboration solution. As such, the platform is constantly evolving, unlike the historical “on-premise” solutions: new features or settings appear and are modified, while others disappear (e.g. retirement of Skype for Business planned for 2021, July 31^st and the end of legacy authentication support for Exchange Online planned for 2020). This continuous delivery pace is imposed by Microsoft, without control. Hence, a completely new governance model is required.

Changes integration can no longer be done in project mode. It must follow an established process. In this model, the workplace and security teams must work hand in hand and must be represented in all project and architecture committees, starting from the very beginning of the platform use cases design. These teams will also have a common responsibility to ensure the platform efficiency and regulatory compliance.

The security team sees its perimeter evolving: it no longer has control over security tools and can, or even must, play a business enabler role to support the migration to the cloud by proposing new uses (e.g. opening a controlled external file exchange service). An appropriate organization must be put in place. We could even consider having a Security Officer dedicated to the platform very close to the business, with the role of advising projects, ensuring the platform configuration and monitoring security alerts.

Another topic to be addressed is the delegated administration.  Even though it is not a rare situation, it is not possible to have nearly 20 General Administrators for an O365 tenant. Indeed, a Global Admin has control over Office 365 services, but also Intune, Azure, AAD, etc. A delegated administration solution must be considered for user accounts and objects, through the implementation of an interface or a connector based on PowerShell or Graph API. This process should allow the company to manage all objects while considering business logic. To define this new governance model, the following security pillars must be articulated:

• Identity management ;
• Mastery of services and uses ;
• Control of compliance to company policies.

Identity management at the core of the model

In a solution designed to enable internal or external collaboration, with an ATAWAD use (Any Time, Any Where, Any Device), identity management (and therefore authentication) is the core of platform management.  As with any project, the definition phase of who can access what, when and where is fundamental.

On Office 365, there are three types of users, each with different privilege levels: administrators, internal users and guests (external users invited to collaborate on a file or within an O365 Group or SharePoint site).

For each of these account types, implementing the defined security measures will be challenging. In addition to the unavoidable multi-factor authentication (highlighted by the data leak that affected Deloitte in 2017), there are also other essential issues, such as administrator access control (personalized or predefined roles, permanent or occasional access, etc.) and guest users lifecycle management (nothing being clearly defined by default). The cost of Azure AD Premium licenses or a third-party tool will be a major element of the discussion.

Also note that Office 365 allows external applications to communicate with its APIs. The external application can then act on behalf of a user with its own rights or of an administrator with higher privileges. These applications can come from different application stores (such as AppSource or AAD) or be developed locally. The management of permissions granted to these applications must be highly considered by companies. Indeed, through APIs, it is very easy to imagine a massive data leak in case of a user dupe (e.g. an application requiring unnecessary permissions, such as email access).

An essential but neglected control of services and uses

Once access to Office 365 is under control, the next topic is to manage its use. It is not uncommon to observe that some services, not prioritized during migration to the Cloud (Power BI, Teams, Flow, API access, etc.) are left accessible with their default configuration. The two reasons are generally a focus on adoption and a lack of time devoted to these non-priority services. In addition to setting up the service, it is also essential to define precise rules around uses to clarify who can do what and when (e.g. managing SharePoint authorizations, creating Groups). The best solution consists in implementing technical measures (general settings or configuration via PowerShell) congruent with the defined policy.

However, the lack of security of these services leaves the door open to potential data leaks: automatic transfer to the outside, exposure on the Internet or loss of the data control. As written above, governance must take security into account when designing future uses. Services must be analyzed and tested on small populations. Indeed, it will always be easier to open a feature than to restrict an already widespread use. In that case, it will be necessary to carry out an impact analysis, to tinker with a workaround solution and to raise users’ awareness widely. However, these actions may require significant investment and could be avoided.

The management of the service should not end with user adoption. Security and Workplace teams will be responsible for following Office 365 evolution (Evergreen program, setting up a watch, monitoring Microsoft blogs, etc.) in order to assess new opportunities and threats.

The control of the compliance with company policies

The implementation of the company security policies is the last pillar and includes the implementation of security tools: information protection, anti-malware, supervision and alerting.

Concerning Office 365 security, we can differentiate 3 levels of maturity. The resources put in place will depend on the expertise available (resources being limited on the market) and the budget (depending in particular on the strategy of the Microsoft licensing management company):

• Level 1 – Control of identities, services and use of the Security and Compliance Center: the company implements native Security Center and Compliance Center security solutions (including Office DLP, Exchange Online Protection, eDiscovery) accessible with basic licenses;
• Level 2 – Development of “in-house tools”: the company creates a set of simple scripts or dashboards, using Graph API, Security Graph API and PowerShell, to implement controls and security measures adapted to its context (e.g. life cycle management of guest users);
• Level 3 – Use of advanced security tools: the company implements additional solutions to strengthen the level of security: tools to fight data leaks, analyze malware on emails, review rights, detect abnormal behavior or even harden the use of the platform according to the context.

Mastering Office 365 services, their uses and native security features is essential, and must precede any consideration of adding an additional security tool, which would not cover existing vulnerabilities and would only add complexity.

Sample of controls included in the Wavestone Office 365 Audit Methodology

Conclusion

Office 365 is an interesting case of opening business applications on the Internet through the Cloud. This evolution requires adapting the company historical security model, towards the airport model following the Cloud adoption.

However, Office 365 security must not omit the security of the on-premise bricks necessary for the platform operation, as it is generally the case for the authentication that is carried out by ADFS.

Cet article A secure Office 365, a rare gem? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

La téléphonie Lync, un démarrage difficile

Microsoft Office Communicator, lancé en 2007 et permettant des échanges en temps réel entre collaborateurs (IM, appels audio/vidéo, présence), devient Lync en 2010 (contraction de “Link” et “Sync”). Ce nouveau produit offre à Microsoft l’opportunité de faire son entrée dans le monde convoité de la téléphonie et des communications unifiées. En se basant sur son historique et son expertise reconnus sur les solutions logicielles collaboratives, Microsoft anticipe une adoption rapide de cette nouvelle brique téléphonie. Cependant, de 2010 à 2012, Lync a du mal à convaincre les Grands Comptes qui ne se sentent pas prêts à jouer les pilotes sur une fonctionnalité aussi critique que la téléphonie, avec un produit sur lequel les intégrateurs n’ont pas vraiment d’expérience.

Moins d’un an après les premiers déploiements à grande échelle, la question la plus fréquemment posée est encore “quels avantages aurais-je à utiliser la téléphonie Lync ?“. Une question qui mérite d’être posée au vu de l’intérêt croissant des entreprises pour les outils collaboratifs – et de fait toute solution les englobant.

Des fonctionnalités distinctes selon le type de licence

Lync a été pensé pour différents usages, traduits par différents niveaux de licences cumulatives. La licence Standard supportant les fonctions “basiques” – IM, présence, appels audio/vidéo poste à poste, interconnexion Skype -, il faudra investir dans la licence Enterprise afin d’avoir accès à l’organisation de réunions, de conférences audio, vidéo ou web. Enfin une souscription supplémentaire à la licence Plus donnera accès aux fonctions de téléphonie telles que les appels vers/depuis l’extérieur de l’entreprise, les renvois d’appel, les groupes de réponse, la délégation patron/secrétaire ou encore les appels d’urgence.

La licence Plus permet réellement d’utiliser le poste de travail comme élément central de la téléphonie, en s’appuyant sur différents périphériques. Il est envisageable d’utiliser les haut-parleurs et le micro de l’ordinateur, ce qui n’engage aucun frais de matériel supplémentaire (sauf pour certains PC/Mac fixes) mais nécessite en revanche des composants de bonne qualité et un environnement sonore extrêmement calme. Le casque audio USB ou sans-fil est souvent le meilleur investissement, permettant une qualité sonore appréciable dans la plupart des cas. Un téléphone physique relié en USB, sans aucune intelligence embarquée, peut être également mis en place. Dans ces deux derniers cas, l’extinction du PC entraîne bien entendu la désactivation du périphérique audio.

Semblables aux solutions classiques de ToIP, des téléphones IP stand-alone peuvent aussi être utilisés, une fois reliés au même compte Lync que celui auquel est connecté le client PC/Mac. Il est alors toujours possible de recevoir et émettre des appels, même avec un PC éteint. Pour les usages en salle de réunion, les Meeting-Phones (ou “Pieuvres audioconférence”) seront préférées, tandis que les solutions naissantes DECT et téléphones Wi-Fi seront destinées aux usines et aux gardiens, embarquant des fonctions avancées telles que la détection d’homme à terre.

La version mobile, Lync Mobile 2013 permet de retrouver la plupart des fonctionnalités offertes par le client (IM, appels audio/vidéo sur IP, partage de présentation PowerPoint réunions en ligne…) sur smartphone ou tablette iOS, Android ou Windows Phone à travers les applications dédiées. À noter que cette version 2013 permet de réels appels Lync (qui rejoignent le réseau de l’entreprise à travers le serveur Edge et le Reverse Proxy) via Wi-Fi ou 3G/4G.

Du point de vue de l’architecture et du sourcing ?

Au niveau architecture globale, Lync ne diffère pas réellement des solutions que peuvent proposer les autres constructeurs de téléphonie, si ce n’est que l’ensemble des services peut être concentré sur un seul serveur (“Front End”), là où d’autres solutions pourraient nécessiter un serveur par application.

Microsoft a également profité de la montée de version majeure de Lync (2010 à 2013) pour faire ses premiers pas dans le Cloud en proposant non plus un seul modèle d’architecture physique (“Server” ou “On Premise“) mais également une version “Online“, avec la possibilité de mettre en place une architecture “hybride” mixant les deux solutions.

Si la plupart des fonctions de base sont supportées dans les trois versions, seule la version Server permet l’activation de la téléphonie. A l’instar de ses concurrents, Lync permet une connexion au Réseau Téléphonique Commuté (RTC) centralisée ou en local via des passerelles. Sur les sites où la téléphonie a un impact direct sur les métiers (centres d’appels notamment), il est possible d’installer en sus de la passerelle un serveur Lync Standard Edition (SE) ou une Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) pour conserver l’ensemble de fonctions de téléphonie avancées en cas de perte du WAN (groupes de réponses, conférences,…).

À noter que Microsoft n’est pas fournisseur de ces passerelles, contrairement à Cisco qui fabrique ses propres “Cisco Integrated Services Routers”. L’entreprise de Redmond oriente alors ses clients vers des fournisseurs homologués tels que AudioCodes ou encore Sonus (ex-NET). Il est également important de savoir que l’offre Lync Online (à travers la solution Office 365) ne supporte pas la téléphonie.

Cet article De l’outil collaboratif à la téléphonie, Lync peut-il trouver sa place en entreprise ? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.