Information
Security defaults in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) make it easier to be secure and help protect your organization. Security defaults contain preconfigured security settings for common attacks.
Microsoft is making security defaults available to everyone. The goal is to ensure that all organizations have a basic level of security enabled at no extra cost. You may turn on security defaults in the Azure portal.
Rationale:
Security defaults provide secure default settings that we manage on behalf of organizations to keep customers safe until they are ready to manage their own identity security settings.
For example, doing the following:
Requiring all users and admins to register for MFA.
Challenging users with MFA - mostly when they show up on a new device or app, but more often for critical roles and tasks.
Disabling authentication from legacy authentication clients, which can't do MFA.
Impact:
Enabling security defaults may negatively impact the functionality of other Microsoft services, such as MS365. This recommendation should be implemented initially and then may be overridden by other service/product specific CIS Benchmarks.
NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.
Solution
From Azure Portal
To enable security defaults in your directory:
From Azure Home select the Portal Menu.
Browse to Azure Active Directory > Properties
Select Manage security defaults
Set the Enable security defaults toggle to Yes
Select Save
Please note that at this point of time, there is no Azure CLI or other API commands available to programmatically conduct security configuration for this recommendation.
Default Value:
If your tenant was created on or after October 22, 2019, security defaults may already be enabled in your tenant.