Common Conditional Access policy: Sign-in risk-based multifactor authentication

Most users have a normal behavior that can be tracked, when they fall outside of this norm it could be risky to allow them to just sign in. You may want to block that user or maybe just ask them to perform multifactor authentication to prove that they're really who they say they are.

A sign-in risk represents the probability that a given authentication request isn't authorized by the identity owner. Organizations with Microsoft Entra ID P2 licenses can create Conditional Access policies incorporating Microsoft Entra ID Protection sign-in risk detections.

There are two locations where this policy may be configured, Conditional Access and Identity Protection. Configuration using a Conditional Access policy is the preferred method providing more context including enhanced diagnostic data, report-only mode integration, Graph API support, and the ability to utilize other Conditional Access attributes like sign-in frequency in the policy.

The Sign-in risk-based policy protects users from registering MFA in risky sessions. If users aren't registered for MFA, their risky sign-ins are blocked, and they see an AADSTS53004 error.

Template deployment

Organizations can choose to deploy this policy using the steps outlined below or using the Conditional Access templates.

Enable with Conditional Access policy

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Conditional Access Administrator.
  2. Browse to Protection > Conditional Access.
  3. Select Create new policy.
  4. Give your policy a name. We recommend that organizations create a meaningful standard for the names of their policies.
  5. Under Assignments, select Users or workload identities.
    1. Under Include, select All users.
    2. Under Exclude, select Users and groups and choose your organization's emergency access or break-glass accounts.
  6. Under Target resources > Cloud apps > Include, select All cloud apps.
  7. Under Conditions > Sign-in risk, set Configure to Yes. Under Select the sign-in risk level this policy will apply to.
    1. Select High and Medium.
    2. Select Done.
  8. Under Access controls > Grant.
    1. Select Grant access, Require multifactor authentication.
    2. Select Select.
  9. Under Session.
    1. Select Sign-in frequency.
    2. Ensure Every time is selected.
    3. Select Select.
  10. Confirm your settings and set Enable policy to Report-only.
  11. Select Create to create to enable your policy.

After administrators confirm the settings using report-only mode, they can move the Enable policy toggle from Report-only to On.

Next steps