
Some beef up their security further with Conditional Access, a type of zero trust method that requires several conditions be met in order to grant access to data and other assets. Most customers leave the setting as is, according to the company. More than 30 million organizations have been operating with this default setting, which Microsoft said had led to 80% fewer compromises for that group as a whole.

The default MFA setting has already been in effect for new Azure AD customers since October 2019. Top Tech Conferences & Events to Add to Your Calendar in 2023
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How to Create a Local Account in Windows 11 Pro Support for these Microsoft enterprise products ends in 2023 SEE: Password breach: Why pop culture and passwords don’t mix (free PDF) (TechRepublic) Must-read Windows coverage In the blog post, Microsoft said that 99.9% of the hacked accounts that it has observed don’t have MFA enabled, putting them at risk for phishing attacks and other threats. The reason is simple: Anyone who attempts to sign into an account using stolen credentials won’t get very far without that second method of authentication, ideally provided by an app such as Microsoft Authenticator. Multi-factor authentication is still one of the best ways to protect accounts and data from compromise. This means that administrators and users alike will be required to set up MFA and use it to secure their logins each time they sign in.

In a new blog post, the company revealed that it’s adding multi-factor authentication as the default security setting for existing Azure customers who haven’t changed that setting on their own. Microsoft is taking a more aggressive step to try to protect users of Azure Active Directory from account compromise. The latest move will enable MFA as the default security setting even for older Azure accounts. Microsoft sets multi-factor authentication as default for all Azure AD customers
