Enforce authentication with strong creds for all privileged accounts
Implementation Effort: High – Implementing strong authentication methods for all privileged accounts requires coordinated efforts across IT, security, and application teams to audit, assess, and reconfigure authentication mechanisms, often involving multiple systems and stakeholders.
User Impact: Low – Administrators must adopt new authentication methods, which may need training and adjustments to their workflows.
Overview
Enforcing authentication strength for all privileged accounts is essential to protect sensitive resources. This involves mandating the use of phishing-resistant authentication methods, such as Windows Hello for Business, FIDO2 security keys, or certificate-based authentication, through Conditional Access policies in Microsoft Entra ID. By leveraging the authentication strengths feature, organizations can specify required authentication methods for accessing critical resources, ensuring that only verified and authorized users can perform high-privilege operations. This approach aligns with the Zero Trust principles of "Verify explicitly" by continuously validating user identities and "Use least privilege access" by restricting access based on strong authentication. Failure to implement these measures can expose organizations to credential-based attacks, unauthorized access, and potential data breaches.