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Practical cybersecurity articles, step-by-step guides, and quick-reference cheat sheets — from Active Directory hardening to Microsoft 365 and zero trust. Written by someone who's done the work. No hype, no fluff.
6 results for “mfa” · Clear
Passkeys by Default and the Retirement of Microsoft SMS and Voice MFA: The Entra Migration Playbook
Microsoft Entra ID is making passkeys the default sign-in experience and retiring Microsoft-provided SMS and voice authentication. Two dates matter: on 1 September 2026 passkeys are auto-enabled for every user still on SMS or voice and a Microsoft-managed registration campaign starts nudging them; on 1 February 2027 Microsoft-provided SMS and voice telecom delivery is retired, and after that any user whose only MFA method is SMS or voice hits a blocking passkey-registration prompt with no opt-out. This playbook covers who is in scope, how to find your exposed users, how to move them to passkeys, when a customer-managed telecom provider is worth it, the temporary Graph opt-out and its limits, and how it all ties into your Conditional Access baseline. Dates and behaviours validated against Microsoft Learn, August 2026.
Anatomy of a Device Code Phishing Email: A Real Investigation
A phishing email with no malware, no cloned login page and a clean URL reputation would still have handed an attacker a fully authenticated Microsoft 365 session — without ever seeing the password, and without the victim's MFA slowing them down. This is a captured, screen-by-screen walkthrough of a device code phishing email (the Cloudflare hold-to-continue gate, the copied Microsoft device code, the genuine sign-in page) plus the detection, hardening, and full mitigating and compensating controls to stop it.
Conditional Access Baseline Policies Every Microsoft 365 Tenant Needs in 2026
Every Microsoft 365 tenant should run a baseline of roughly eight to ten Conditional Access policies — block legacy authentication, require MFA for all users, phishing-resistant MFA for admins, compliant or managed devices, block device code flow, sign-in and user-risk policies, session controls, guest MFA, and a break-glass exclusion group — deployed in report-only first, piloted with a ring group, then enforced. This guide gives the named set, the safe rollout order, the P1/P2 licensing reality, the enforcement changes that landed in June and July 2026, and the production gotchas that lock teams out of their own tenant.
How to Configure Microsoft Entra PIM for Just-in-Time Admin Access
Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) removes standing admin rights by making a role eligible instead of permanently active: the admin activates it just-in-time, for a time-boxed window, subject to MFA, justification and optional approval. This step-by-step guide covers licensing (Entra ID P2 or Entra ID Governance), prerequisites and break-glass accounts, assigning eligible roles, configuring activation settings, the end-user activation experience, validation, and Access Reviews — plus the production gotchas that lock teams out of their own tenant.
Ghost Phishing: How the EvilTokens Campaign Hides in the Browser to Hijack Microsoft 365 Accounts
A new "ghost phishing" wave from the EvilTokens kit is slipping past email security by keeping its payload AES-encrypted until it renders in the victim's browser, then using Microsoft device-code phishing to take over Microsoft 365 accounts without ever stealing a password. This guide breaks down how the technique works, why traditional URL and email controls miss it, who is being hit, and the concrete detection and hardening steps to defend your tenant.
Entra ID Conditional Access Gaps: 10 Misconfigurations That Quietly Defeat MFA
The most common Entra ID Conditional Access gaps are policies that exclude too much, sit in report-only forever, ignore legacy authentication, skip device and risk signals, and leave break-glass accounts unmanaged. Here's how to find and close each one.