Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for SharePoint On-Premise and online

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Sharepoint Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) or Multi-Factor Authentication is the process of secure Authentication in which a user or an organizational employee have to provide two factors or addtional layer to gain the access to SharePoint. Microsoft SharePoint Two-Factor Authentication starts with user submitting his traditional username and password (Credentials can be from Active Directory AD, any identity provider, database, etc.). Once user successfully gets authenticated with the 1st step verification, configured 2FA (OTP over SMS, Push Notifications, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator etc) method prompts on for 2nd-step verification. miniOrange provides 15+ authentication methods (MFA methods) and secure solutions for various use cases. After successfully authenticating with both of the steps a user is granted with the secure access to the Microsoft SharePoint. This additional security layer prevents the unauthorized person from accessing the Microsoft SharePoint resources even if cyber attackers get to know your credentials.

With the pace of password-based security breaches, simply using usernames and passwords to secure SharePoint or other applications is no longer an option. That’s why it has become necessary to add an additional layer of two-factor authentication security to filter out unauthorised users. Enabling SharePoint 2FA / MFA always verifies identities before allowing secure access, making it more difficult for unauthorized users to gain access to your Microsoft SharePoint account. miniOrange 2FA/MFA solution can be used for secure access on both SharePoint on-premises as well as Microsoft SharePoint online.

Prerequisites

1. Sync On-Premise Active Directory with Microsoft Entra ID

NOTE: If you want to use your On-Premise Active Directory as a user store to Single Sign-On into SharePoint then follow the below steps to sync your AD and Microsoft Entra ID.

• Download the Microsoft Entra ID Connect
• Run the Microsoft Entra ID installer on your domain machine and follow the setup.

2. Verify your UPN Domain in Azure Portal

• In the Azure portal navigate to Microsoft Entra ID >> Custom domain names and click on Add custom domain.
  
• Enter the full domain name in the right pane that pops up and click on Add domain.



• A new window will open up with TXT/MX records for the domain. You will have to add the resented entry in your domain name registrar.



• Click on verify once you have added the entry

Follow the step-by-step guide given below for SharePoint Single Sign-On (SSO)

1. Setup a Custom Branded URL in miniOrange Admin Console

Single Sign-On into SharePoint requires a custom branded URL to be set. Access to miniOrange and connected resources will need to be through the custom branded URL in the format: https://<custom_domain>.xecurify.com/moas

• Login to miniOrange Admin Console.
• Click on Customization in the left menu of the dashboard.
• In Basic Settings, set the Organization Name as the custom_domain name.
• Click Save. Once that is set, the branded login URL would be of the format https://<custom_domain>.xecurify.com/moas/login

2. Configure SharePoint in miniOrange

• Login into miniOrange Admin Console.
• Go to Apps and click on Add Application button.



• In Choose Application Type click on Create App button in SAML/WS-FED application type.



• In the next step, search for Office 365. Click on Office 365 app.



• Make sure the SP Entity ID or Issuer is: urn:federation:MicrosoftOnline
• Make sure the ACS URL is: https://login.microsoftonline.com/login.srf
• Click on Next.



• Configure Name ID based on the User Store you are using:
  • Using Active Directory / miniOrange brokering service: Select External IDP Attribute from the dropdown and add objectguid in the text-box that appears.
  
  • Using miniOrange as a User Store: Select Custom Profile Attribute and select a Custom Attribute from the drop-down.
  
• Set the login policy. You can choose to enable 2FA for login or have users login using a standard username-password.
• Click on Save to configure Office 365.

3. Configure Microsoft Online Services

• Click on Select dropdown and choose Metadata.
  



• Click on the Download Federate Domain Script button under "INFORMATION REQUIRED TO AUTHENTICATE VIA EXTERNAL IDPS"



• Enter the domain name that you want to federate and click on Download. Note: You cannot federate your default "onmicrosoft.com" domain. To federate your SharePoint tenant, you must add a custom domain to SharePoint.



• After downloading the script, Open PowerShell run the federate_domain script using:
  cd ./Downloads powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File federate_domain.ps1



• Your domain is now federated. Use the commands below to check your federation settings:
  Connect-MsolService Get-MsolDomainFederationService

4. Configure 2FA for SharePoint

4.1: Enable 2FA for Users of SharePoint app

• To enable 2FA for Users of SharePoint application. Go to Policies >> App Authentication Policy
• Click on Edit against the application you have configured.



• Enable the Enable 2-Factor Authentication (MFA) option.



• Click on Save.

4.2: Configure 2FA for your Endusers

• To enable 2FA/MFA for endusers, go to 2-Factor Authentication >> 2FA Options For EndUsers.
• Select default Two-Factor authentication method for end users. Also, you can select particular 2FA methods, which you want to show on the end users dashboard.
• Once Done with the settings, click on Save to configure your 2FA settings.

4.3: Enduser 2FA Setup

• Login to End-User Dashboard using end user login URL.
• For Cloud Version: The login URL (branding url) which you have set.
• For On-Premise version: The login URL will be the same as of Admin Login URL.
• Select Setup 2FA from left panel. Then select any of the 2FA method available.
• For now, we have selected the SMS >> OTP OVER SMS as our 2FA method. You can explore the guide to setup other 2FA methods here.
• Enable the OTP over SMS if you have your phone number added under your profile section else click on Edit button.



• Enter you Phone Number along with the necessary country code and click on the SAVE button.

5. Now sign in to your Office 365 - SharePoint account with miniOrange IdP by either of the two steps:

1. Using SP initiated login :-

1. Go to Office 365 - SharePoint Login and click on sign-in
2. You will be redirected to Microsoft Online portal. Here you have to enter the UPN of the user.(It should contain the domain that is federated with miniOrange)
3. Now you will be redirected to miniOrange IdP Sign On Page.




4. Enter your login credential and click on Login.
5. Since we have Two-factor authentication(2FA) enabled, you will be prompted to register for it. It's a one time process.
6. Configure your basic details.



7. Configure any authentication method of your choice.



8. After successful registration, you will be logged in to your Office 365 account.
9. Now we have Two-factor authentication enabled.
10. To verify your Two-factor authentication(2FA) configuration, go to your Office 365 Domain. You will be redirected to miniOrange login console.



11. Enter your login credentials, and click on login. It will prompt to verify yourself against the configured 2fa method.
    e.g. If you have configured OTP over SMS, after login into Office 365 it will prompt for OTP.



12. Enter the OTP received in your phone, after successful 2fa verification, you will be redirected to the Office 365 dashboard.

2. Using IdP initiated login :-

1. Login to your miniOrange Self Service Console as an End User and click on the Office 365 icon on your Dashboard.
2. Once you click on Office 365 you don't need to enter credentials again you will be redirected to Office 365 account.

6. Configure Your User Directory (Optional)

miniOrange provides user authentication from various external sources, which can be Directories (like ADFS, Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, OpenLDAP, Google, AWS Cognito etc), Identity Providers (like Okta, Shibboleth, Ping, OneLogin, KeyCloak), Databases (like MySQL, Maria DB, PostgreSQL) and many more. You can configure your existing directory/user store or add users in miniOrange.

• Setup miniOrange as IDP
• Setup AD as User Directory
• Setup External IDP

• To add your users in miniOrange there are 2 ways:

1. Create User in miniOrange

2. Bulk Upload Users

1. Create User in miniOrange

• Click on Users >> User List >> Add User.



• Here, fill the user details without the password and then click on the Create User button.



• After successful user creation a notification message "An end user is added successfully" will be displayed at the top of the dashboard.



• Click on Onboarding Status tab. Check the email, with the registered e-mail id and select action Send Activation Mail with Password Reset Link from Select Action dropdown list and then click on Apply button.



• Now, Open your email id. Open the mail you get from miniOrange and then click on the link to set your account password.
• On the next screen, enter the password and confirm password and then click on the Single Sign-On (SSO) reset password button.



• Now, you can log in into miniOrange account by entering your credentials.

2. Bulk Upload Users in miniOrange via Uploading CSV File.

• Navigate to Users >> User List. Click on Add User button.



• In Bulk User Registration Download sample csv format from our console and edit this csv file according to the instructions.



• To bulk upload users, choose the file make sure it is in comma separated .csv file format then click on Upload.



• After uploading the csv file successfully, you will see a success message with a link.
• Click on that link you will see list of users to send activation mail. Select users to send activation mail and click on Send Activation Mail. An activation mail will be sent to the selected users.

• Click on External Directories >> Add Directory in the left menu of the dashboard.



• Select Directory type as AD/LDAP.



1. STORE LDAP CONFIGURATION IN MINIORANGE: Choose this option if you want to keep your configuration in miniOrange. If active directory is behind a firewall, you will need to open the firewall to allow incoming requests to your AD.
2. STORE LDAP CONFIGURATION ON PREMISE: Choose this option if you want to keep your configuration in your premise and only allow access to AD inside premises. You will have to download and install miniOrange gateway in your premise.




• Enter LDAP Display Name and LDAP Identifier name.
• Select Directory Type as Active Directory.
• Enter the LDAP Server URL or IP Address against LDAP Server URL field.
• Click on Test Connection button to verify if you have made a successful connection with your LDAP server.



• In Active Directory, go to the properties of user containers/OU's and search for Distinguished Name attribute.



• Enter the valid Bind account Password.
• Click on Test Bind Account Credentials button to verify your LDAP Bind credentials for LDAP connection.



• Search Base is the location in the directory where the search for a user begins. You will get this from the same place you got your Distinguished name.



• Select a suitable Search filter from the drop-down menu. If you use User in Single Group Filter or User in Multiple Group Filter, replace the <group-dn> in the search filter with the distinguished name of the group in which your users are present. To use custom Search Filter select "Write your Custom Filter" option and customize it accordingly.



• You can also configure following options while setting up AD. Enable Activate LDAP in order to authenticate users from AD/LDAP. Click on the Save button to add user store.




Here's the list of the attributes and what it does when we enable it. You can enable/disable accordingly.

Attribute	Description
Activate LDAP	All user authentications will be done with LDAP credentials if you Activate it
Sync users in miniOrange	Users will be created in miniOrange after authentication with LDAP
Fallback Authentication	If LDAP credentials fail then user will be authenticated through miniOrange
Allow users to change password	This allows your users to change their password. It updates the new credentials in your LDAP server
Enable administrator login	On enabling this, your miniOrange Administrator login authenticates using your LDAP server
Show IdP to users	If you enable this option, this IdP will be visible to users
Send Configured Attributes	If you enable this option, then only the attributes configured below will be sent in attributes at the time of login



• Click on Save. After this, it will show you the list of User stores. Click on Test Connection to check whether you have enter valid details. For that, it will ask for username and password.



• On Successful connection with LDAP Server, a success message is shown.
• Click on Test Attribute Mapping.



• Enter a valid Username. Then, click on Test. Mapped Attributes corresponding to the user are fetched.



• After successful Attribute Mapping Configuration, go back to the ldap configuration and enable Activate LDAP in order to authenticate users from AD/LDAP.

Refer our guide to setup LDAPS on windows server.

User Import and Provisioning from AD

• Go to Settings >> Product Settings in the Customer Admin Account.



• Enable the "Enable User Auto Registration" option and click Save.



• (Optional) To send a welcome email to all the end users that will be imported, enable the "Enable sending Welcome Emails after user registration" option and click Save.



• From the Left-Side menu of the dashboard select Provisioning.



• In Setup Provisioning tab select Active Directory in the Select Application drop-down.
• Toggle the Import Users tab, click on Save button.



• On the same section, switch to Import Users section.
• Select Active Directory from the dropdown and click on the Import Users tab, to import all the users from Active Directory to miniOrange.



• You can view all the Users you have imports by selecting Users >> User List from Left Panel.



• All the imported users will be auto registered.
• These groups will be helpful in adding multiple 2FA policies on the applications.

miniOrange integrates with various external user sources such as directories, identity providers, and etc.

• Okta
• ADFS
• Ping
• AWS Cognito
• Many more

Not able to find your IdP or Need help setting it up?

Contact us or email us at idpsupport@xecurify.com and we'll help you setting it up in no time.

7. Adaptive Authentication with SharePoint

A. Restricting access to SharePoint with IP Blocking

You can use adaptive authentication with SharePoint Single Sign-On (SSO) to improve the security and functionality of Single Sign-On. You can allow a IP Address in certain range for SSO or you can deny it based your requirements and you can also challenge the user to verify his authenticity. Adaptive authentication manages the user authentication bases on different factors such as Device ID, Location, Time of Access, IP Address and many more.

You can configure Adaptive Authentication with IP Blocking in following way:

• Login to Self Service Console >> Adaptive Authentication.
• Add a Policy Name for your Adaptive Authentication Policy.



• Select your Action for behavior Change and Challenge Type for user from the Action for behavior Change Section.





Action for behavior Change Options :




Attribute	Description
Allow	Allow user to authenticate and use services if Adaptive authentication condition is true.
Challenge	Challenge users with one of the three methods mentioned below for verifying user authenticity.
Deny	Deny user authentications and access to services if Adaptive authentication condition is true.




Challenge Type Options :




Attribute	Description
User second Factor	The User needs to authenticate using the second factor he has opted or assigned for such as OTP over SMS PUSH Notification OTP over Email And 12 more methods.
KBA (Knowledge-based authentication)	The System will ask user for 2 of 3 questions he has configured in his Self Service Console. Only after right answer to both questions user is allowed to proceed further.
OTP over Alternate Email	User will receive a OTP on the alternate email he has configured threw Self Service Console. Once user provides the correct OTP he is allowed to proceed further.



• Now Enable Enable IP Restriction option from the IP RESTRICTION CONFIGURATION section to configure custom IP range.



• Select the Action you want to perform if the IP address is out of the range. i.e. Allow, Challenge & Deny.
• Specify the IP Address range for which you want above setting to reflect. You can add more than one IP Address ranges by clicking on following button +.
• Scroll to the end and click on save.

B. Adaptive Authentication with Limiting number of devices.

Using Adaptive Authentication you can also restrict the number of devices the end user can access the Services on. You can allow end users to access services on a fixed no. of devices. The end users will be able to access services provided by us on this fixed no. of devices.

You can configure Adaptive Authentication with Device Restriction in following way


• Login to Self Service Console >> Adaptive Authentication.
• Add a Policy Name for your Adaptive Authentication Policy.
• Select your Action for behavior Change and Challenge Type for user from the Action for behavior Change Section.




• Scroll down to Device Configuration section and enable Allow User to Register Device option to allow users to register their devices.
• Enter the Number of Devices which are allowed to register in field next to Number of Device Registrations Allowed
• Choose Action if number of devices exceeded (This will override your setting for Action for behavior Change.)
1. Challenge: The user needs to verify himself using any of the three methods mentioned in table in step 7.1
2. Deny : Deny users access to the system
• Enable option Send email alerts to Users if number of Device registrations exceeded allowed count if you want to alert the user about no of devices exceeding the limit. Save the configuration.

C. Add Adaptive Authentication policy to SharePoint.

• Login to Self Service Console >> Policies.
• Click on Edit option for predefined app policy.



• Set your application name in the Application and select password as Login Method.
• Enable Adaptive Authentication on Policy page and select the required restriction method as an option.
• From Select Login Policy dropdown select the policy we created in last step and click on save.

D.Notification and Alert Message.

This section handles the notifications and alerts related to Adaptive Authentication.It provides the following options :

• Get email alerts if users login from unknown devices or locations : Admin need to enable this option to enable receiving alerts for different alert options.
  
  
  

Option	Description
Challenge Completed and Device Registered	Enabling this option allows you to send an email alert when an end-user completes a challenge and registers a device.
Challenge Completed but Device Not Registered	Enabling this option allows you to send an email alert when an end-user completes a challenge but do not registers the device.
Challenge Failed	Enabling this option allows you to send an email alert when an end-user fails to complete the challenge.






• Next subsection is Send email alerts which allows us to enable or disable alerts for admin and end-users. To enable alerts for admins, you can enable the “Administrators” switch button.




• In case you want multiple admins accounts to receive alerts then you can enable the option for admin and then enter the admin emails separated by a ‘,’ in the input field next to Administrators email to receive alerts label. To enable alerts for the end-users, you can enable the “End Users” switch button.
• In case you want to customize the deny message that end user receive in case his authentication denied due to adaptive policy, you can do this by entering the message inside “Deny message for Adaptive Authentication” text box.


How to add a trusted Device

1. When End-user log in to the self service console after the policy for device restriction is on, he is provided the option to add the current device as a trusted device.

External References

• Enable MFA/2FA for office 365
• Enable Single sign-on (SSO) for Microsoft Sharepoint online
• Enable Single sign-on (SSO) for Microsoft SharePoint on-premises
• Enable SSO or MFA for Dynamics 365
• On-Premise MFA Solution
  
• MFA for On-Premise Active Directory
  
• The Essential Eight Maturity Model Explained