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Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) self service password reset (SSPR) gives users the ability to change or reset their password, with no administrator or help desk involvement. If a user’s account is locked or they forget their password, they can follow prompts to unblock themselves and get back to work. This ability reduces help desk calls and loss of productivity when a user can’t sign in to their device or an application.
With Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) self service password reset (SSPR), users can update their password or unlock their account using a web browser. Please note that in a hybrid environment where Azure AD Connect is used to sync accounts from Active Directory to Azure AD, this scenario can cause passwords to be different between the two directories if password write back is not enabled. Password write back can be used to synchronise password changes in Azure AD back to your on premises Active Directory environment. Azure AD Connect provides a secure mechanism to send these password changes back to an existing on premises directory from Azure AD.
The password reset feature includes a set of capabilities that allow users to manage any password from any device, at any time, from any location, while remaining in compliance with company security policies.
In this blog post, I will go through the process of enabling password write back within Azure AD Connect, enabling self service password reset for a group of Azure AD users, go through the authentication methods and registration options.
Login to your Azure AD Connect Server if you’re syncing your Active Directory accounts to Azure AD
2. Enabled Password Write Back in Azure AD Connect and save settings
3. Let’s confirm Azure AD has picked up the change
4. Login to the Azure Portal portal.azure.com
5. Click Azure Active Directory or locate via the search box
6. Click Password Reset located in the left menu
7. Click On-premises integration
8. Done, see screen shot below.
Notice the additional option to allow users to unlock accounts without resetting their password. This feature designates whether or not users who visit the password reset portal should be given the option to unlock their on premises Active Directory accounts without resetting their password. By default, Azure AD will always unlock accounts when performing a password reset, this setting allows you to separate those two operations. If set to yes, then users will be given the option to reset their password and unlock the account, or to unlock without resetting the password. If set to no, then users will only be able to perform a combined password reset and account unlock operation.
I have left the default settings
9. Now, let’s enable self password reset, click Azure Active Directory and click password reset
10. The password reset feature is disabled by default
11. I will be clicking selected and applying the policy to a security group named CloudBuildPR. Click select
12. Click Save
13. While in the password reset section, you’ll notice Authentication methods in the left menu. Here you can setup the number of authentication methods, including prompting your users to setup security questions as additional authentication options. You can specify your own custom questions that will be visible to the user or select the built in ones provided by Microsoft.
For the purpose of this demo, I will leave the default options enabled. Note that all features may not be available depending on your license type.
14. Moving down the menu, you’ll find Registration including the option on how often you require your users to re-confirm their authentication information they originally submitted. By default it’s 180 days and users are required to register when signing in.
15. The next option down is notifications. The default settings are shown below and are self explanatory.
16. Finally, it’s customization. You could add a link to your online helpdesk portal or an email address to allow users to contact IT in the event they require further assistance. I have already covered on-premise integration earlier so won’t cover that one again
17. Ok, so i’m all set. I have enabled password write back within Azure AD Connect and enabled Password Reset. I have confirmed the configuration has been picked up within Azure AD.
If you’re using a free trial account, you’ll receive the below message. At the time of writing this blog post, the password reset option does not function with trial accounts.
Errors/notifications:
You can’t reset your own password because you haven’t registered for password reset.
You haven’t registered the necessary security information to perform password reset
In this blog post I will go through the process of configuring a conditional access policy within Azure AD.
Conditional Access policies are simply if and then statements, for example, if a user wants to access a resource, then they must complete an action. Example: A staff member wants to access the payroll application and is required to perform multi-factor authentication to access it.
Note: Using this feature requires an Azure AD Premium P1 license
1. Login to the Azure Portal portal.azure.com 2. Click Azure AD or locate via the search box 3. Click Security
4. Click Conditional Access
5. Click New Policy
6. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected:
Assignments: – Selected Users and groups – Selected the Sales group
7. Next, click Cloud apps or actions
8. Select what this policy applies to. For the purpose of this demo, I have clicked select apps
9. Select your apps. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected Office 365 only
10. Next, click Conditions
Up to this point I have selected the Sales group and the application Office 365. I will now continue to apply conditions to the Sales group. Click Conditions
11. Click Device Platforms
12. For the purpose of this demo, I want this policy to apply for Sales people using an IOS device, such as an iphone
13. Click Locations
14. Here you could configure a location, for example you could prevent a conditional access policy from applying to your trusted locations but apply the policy everywhere else. Note the exclude option below where you could exclude locations from this policy.
15. Here you can control user access to target specific client applications not using modern authentication.
Note: When not configured, policies now apply to all client apps, including modern and legacy auth.
16. Click device state
17. Here you can control user access when the device the user is signing in from is not Hybrid Azure AD joined or marked as compliant.
18. Next, click grant
19. Here you can decide what you want this policy to do, block or allow access based on conditions. If you allow, you can select what conditions the users have to meet when authenticating. You could also select several options and select require all the selected controls or require one of the selected controls.
20. Finally, you have the option to enable the policy by clicking On. Clicking Off and the policy will not apply. Or clicking Report-Only which will only log events for you to analyse but not apply to users.
21. Click Create
Note: if you receive the below message after clicking create, you must disabled security defaults before you can create your policy.
Security defaults must be disabled to enable conditional access policy.
Out of the box, Microsoft now provide secure default settings that Microsoft manage on behalf of organisations to keep customers safe until they are ready to manage their own identity security. Security defaults is now enabled by default when setting up a new tenant.
You can disable security defaults by:
Logon in to the Azure portal at portal.azure.com
Click Azure Active Directory, or search using the search box
Click properties located in the left pane
Browse to the bottom of the page, and click the link Manage Security Defaults
22. and here is the policy
Notice the option What If below. This option allows you to test what a conditional access policy would do if applied to a user.
With an Azure virtual machine you get host CPU, disk and up/down state of your VMs out of the box. Enabling additional monitoring capabilities provides insights into the performance and dependencies for your virtual machines.You will be billed based on the amount of data ingested and your data retention settings.
Note: It can take between 5-10 minutes to configure the virtual machine and the monitoring data to appear.
In this blog post I will be going through the process of monitoring my Windows Virtual Desktop session hosts via Azure monitor. I will configure an Azure Log Analytics Workspace, enable diagnostic settings for my host pool, application group and workspace. I will also enable diagnostic settings for Azure AD user sign ins. Finally, I will create a workbook to provide a visual display of stats from my WVD solution.
Let’s get started
Create an Azure Log Analytics Workspace
1. Login to the Azure Portal portal.azure.com 2. Locate and click Log Analytics Workspace
3. Click Add
4. Complete details for your new Log Analytics Workspace. For the purpose of this demo, I have inputted the details below.
5. Click next to move onto pricing tier. There is only one option available
6. Click review + create, allow validation to pass and click create
7. Next, let’s enable diagnostics starting within the Windows Virtual Desktop Host pool. Click Windows Virtual Desktop or locate via the search box
8. Click Host pools
9. Click your host pool
10. Click Diagnostic Settings
11. Click + Add diagnostic setting
12. Select the required log categories
13. Click the option to send to Log Analytics workspace and input a name. When done, click save. That’s the host pool diagnostics linked up to the new Log Analytics Workspace.
Note: If you receive the below error after clicking save, wait a couple of minutes and click save again. The resource does register after the error message appears. If you want to confirm microsoft.insights has registered:
– Click your subscription – Click Resource Providers from the left pane – Locate microsoft.insights
Failed to update diagnostics for ‘ ‘.{“code”:”SubscriptionNotRegistered”,”message”:”The subscription ‘0000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000000’ is not registered to use microsoft.insights.”}.
14. Repeat the steps (10 – 13) for Application Groups, Workspaces and also Azure AD Sign in Logs (Name accordingly)
Note the message about requiring Azure AD Premium when clicking user sign ins within Azure AD Diagnostic Settings. This refers to Azure Heat Map only that won’t work unless you have an AD P1 or P2 license.
15. Let’s enable the workspace agent on the session hosts. Locate Azure Monitor and click
16. Select Virtual Machines from the left pane
17. Click not monitored
18. Click enable against each session host you wish to deploy the agent
19. Click enable and perform the same step for the remaining session hosts you wish to install the agent
20. Select your workspace and click enable
The process may take up to 10 minutes
21. Once enabled, click your Log Analytics Workspace and click Advanced settings located in the left pane
22. Click Data and Windows Performance Counters
23. There were 36 performance and diagnostic counters to add at the time of writing this post. Travis Roberts has created a power shell script to automate the adding of these performance counters. The script is available to at performance and diagnostic data
You also have the option to add them manually (36 to add)
At the time of writing this blog post there was a limit of 20 performance counters which can be added at once through the Azure Portal. If adding manually, ensure you add the counters in batches to avoid the error below. Add batch one, save and then add batch two, or break down into smaller batches and save after each batch.
If adding manually, add the performance counter, click the blue + button and change the sample interval from 10 seconds to 60 seconds to avoid high costs
At the time of writing this blog post, the up to date performance counters are listed below (Visit Travis Roberts Git Hub page for the most up to date list)
24. Performance counters added and interval set from 10 to 60 seconds
25. Click Save
26. Next, we’ll add the work book so we can view the data
27. Click Azure Monitor from within the portal
28. Click Workbooks from the left Pane
29. Click New
30. Click the icon </> as shown below
31. Copy and paste the code from the following WVD Community Git Hub page replacing the code currently displayed – Monitoring Workbook code
32. Click apply after replacing the code
33. Click to select your work analytics workspace if you see warnings such as the one below.
34. Click Done Editing
35. Click save and name your workbook accordingly
36. Done
Further sample queries can be located at the following Microsoft article created by Christiaan Brinkhoff – Proactively monitor ARM-based Windows Virtual Desktop with Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor. This is an excellent article and was a great help when creating this blog post. Also, thanks to Travis Roberts for creating the Powershell script to speed up the entering of performance counters. If you’re getting started with WVD, Travis has created a great WVD course available on the Udemy website called Zero to Hero with Windows Virtual Desktop.
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