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Sophos Central and Azure AD federation setup and behaviour

balletbob

I've setup the Sophos Central Azure AD federation and am slightly puzzled by the process and behaviour.

It seems like an Admin or Standard user still has to create a password in Sophos Central before the Microsoft integration will work.

So, I’m not understanding the purpose of this integration if a user needs to create a password for Sophos Central anyway. It does defeat the purpose of a user using existing credentials. The user object already existed in the Sophos Central console so why did we need to create a password?

Other products that use Azure AD integration are happy to match against account ID without having to have the user create a password that is not used.



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  • 0

    Hi  

    Sophos Central grants access to sensitive security options that when granting to anyone else, can be catastrophic from a security standpoint. Hence it requires a set of credentials to make it even more secure. But if you want to put in a suggestion wherein there should be no need creating separate accounts in Sophos Central once you integrate Azure AD, then I would request you to raise a feature request.

    Thanks,
    Yashraj Singha
    Manager | Global Community Support
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  • 0 in reply to Yashraj S

    Hi Yashraj,

     

    I'm not sure how forcing a local Sophos password (which is then not used) is any more secure than just Azure AD?

    Either way, the user has to exist in Azure AD and in the case of Admin permissions, you have to explicitly define the user as an Administrator in Sophos Central.

     

    Thanks

     

    Damien

  • 0

    Just to be sure. The Point currently of federated sign is to relay on Microsofts "Yes / no" Authentication.

    We are not Syncing any passwords with Microsoft. 

    The Feature request would be "please generate predefined passwords in Central to enable the user". 

    Most likely other products uses this approach (even Azure does the same. It generates a password for you and you can change it or leave it and sign in with your federated sign in). 

     

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  • 0 in reply to LuCar Toni

    Most other product that I use that do a federated login don't also have a local password component. Login is allowed so long as they are a member of a group or there is a user object (with permissions) with a matching ID (email address). There is no password sync.

     

    It sounds like you still create a local password which would in theory allow a user to login either with Microsoft account OR the local password.

     

    From the end use perspective, they don't care about a Sophos ID and most like it means little to them. They want to login with an existing authentication method they know and trust.

    If Sophos needs to create a local password for this to work then do it in the background as a long random password and don't bother the user.

    The barrier to entry is high if we have to ask a user to create Sophos ID in order to be able to use the login with Microsoft function, in order to be able to use the self service features.
    It doesn't happen.

     

    So yes, if my request needs to be "please generate predefined passwords in Central to enable the user", sure, consider that the request. 

    It's something the user shouldn't see or be bothered with.

  • 0 in reply to balletbob

    I fully agree with you. 

    Simply wanted to point the fact out, how Central work right now. 

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  • FormerMember
    0 FormerMember in reply to Yashraj S

    What it also means, is that when we block an account in Azure AD the user can still bypass Microsoft authentication and login locally. We would need to remember to manually delete the account in Sophos. From a security best practice standpoint, that looks odd.

    Therefore I'd say it makes sense to separately request integration with Azure AD so that users are managed by a the AD and not in isolation.

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