Enable Azure MFA geographic location for extra security

Every organization knows that security is essential and needs to be solid. Nowadays, every organization enables MFA and thinks that they are protected and done. Well, hold your horses because that’s not the case. What if a user gets an MFA prompt and accidentally accepts it when clicking on it? That’s when geographic location in Azure AD plays a role and makes MFA push notifications more secure. In this article, you will learn how to enable MFA geographic location in Microsoft Authenticator app for sign-in security purposes.

Enable Azure MFA

Configuring MFA in Azure/Microsoft 365 is a prerequisite, and there are two methods:

1. Configure per-user MFA in Microsoft 365
2. Configure Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication

Note: It’s recommended to configure Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication instead of per-user MFA.

Azure MFA geographic location

Show geographic location in push and passwordless notifications is a feature in Azure AD. When a user receives a passwordless phone sign-in or MFA push notification in Microsoft Authenticator, they’ll see the geographic location based on the IP address that requests the approval where the sign-in originated from.

Note: Geographic location in Azure AD is flexible and can be targeted to a single user, multiple users, all users, and groups.

Let’s look at how to configure MFA geographic location and how it looks.

Enable Azure MFA geographic location

To enable geographic location in Azure AD, follow these steps:

Step 1. Sign in to Microsoft Azure Portal.

Step 2. Click on Menu > Azure Active Directory.

Step 3. Click on Security.

Step 4. Click on Authentication methods.

Step 5. Click on Policies > Microsoft Authenticator.

Step 6. Click on the Basics tab and configure the below settings:

• Enable: Yes
• Target: All users
• Authentication mode: Any

Suppose you want to enable it on a group or a test account; click Select users and select the users/groups.

Step 7. Click on the Configure tab and configure the below settings for Show geographic location in push and passwordless notifications. Don’t forget to Save.

• Status: Enabled
• Target: Include – All users

Note: Two more features are available on the Microsoft Authenticator settings configure page. You should enable these features for security improvements. Read more in Enable Azure MFA number matching and Enable Azure MFA application name.

Step 8. Confirm that Microsoft Authenticator shows the target that you have set and the status enabled.

In the next step, you will test that everything works as you expect.

Verify Azure MFA geographic location

To test that Azure MFA geographic location works, follow the below steps:

Sign in to Microsoft Office portal.

Note: You need to have MFA enabled on the account you like to test and not sign in from a network that is excluded from MFA.

The approve sign in request message appears.

The geographic location appears in the Microsoft Authenticator app to sign in. Tap on Approve.

You will successfully sign in to the portal.

That’s it! You successfully did configure MFA geographic location in Azure AD for the users.

Read more: Export Office 365 users MFA status with PowerShell »

Conclusion

You learned how to enable Azure MFA geographic location and improve sign-in security. It’s essential to enable the feature for all users. You can first select a group and see how they deal with it so you can update the documentation before you send it to the users and enable it for all the users.

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