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

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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 might want to block that user or maybe 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 the identity owner. Organizations with Microsoft Entra ID P2 licenses can create Conditional Access policies incorporating Microsoft Entra ID Protection sign-in risk detections.

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 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.
    3. Select Done.
  6. Under Cloud apps or actions > Include, select All cloud apps.
  7. Under Conditions > Sign-in risk, set Configure to Yes.
    1. Under Select the sign-in risk level this policy will apply to, select High and Medium. This guidance is based on Microsoft recommendations and might be different for each organization
    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.

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