Using Basic Authentication with SharePoint Online

With basic authentication, your SharePoint Online will be accessed on behalf of a user. You will need to provide Microsoft 365 user name and password in the monitored item properties. To access the Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD)/Microsoft 365 organization and perform initial data collection, the user account will need an administrative role in the cloud-based infrastructure.

The user account should be a Cloud-only account.

Further permission assignment will depend on the data you plan to collect:

• To collect both activity and state-in-time data, the administrative role will be still needed. See the table below for details.
• To collect activity data only, the privileged role can be revoked from the specified account after the initial data collection.

Required Roles and Permissions

To...	Requirement	Comment
Collect activity and state-in-time data	Any of the following role combinations: - Application Administrator & Privileged Role Administrator OR - Cloud Application Administrator & Privileged Role Administrator OR - Global Admin (Company Administrator in Microsoft Entra ID PowerShell terms)	Prepare a Cloud-only user account and specify it in the monitored item properties. See the SharePoint Online topic for additional information.
Collect activity data only	1. For initial connection to SharePoint Online, initial data collection, and Netwrix Auditor upgrade from previous version — any of the role combinations listed above. 2. After the initial data collection, the privileged roles can be revoked from this account.

Assigning a Privileged Role for SharePoint and Microsoft 365

When configuring a monitored item for Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) or Microsoft 365 auditing with basic authentication, specify a data collecting account that has sufficient privileges in Microsoft Entra ID. This account should be able to create a dedicated application in your Microsoft Entra ID domain. Depending on your requirements and company policies, you can select one of the following approaches:

• Assign a privileged role (for example, Application Administrator & Privileged Role Administrator) to the account, then revoke it after the application creation and initial data collection, and assign a less-privileged role to this account (for example, Security Reader).
• Use the account with a privileged role on a regular basis. Any additional role assignments will not be necessary in this case. If you select this method, contact your security administrator to avoid violations of security policies in your organization.

NOTE: If you previously used a non-privileged account for Microsoft Entra ID data collection in your Netwrix Auditor, consider that after the upgrade you will have to perform the role assignment procedure again, selecting one of these approaches. Until then, data collection will not be performed.

Follow the steps to assign a privileged role to the account.

Step 1 – Sign in to Microsoft Entra ID portal using your Microsoft account.

Step 2 – Select Microsoft Entra ID on the left.

Step 3 – Select the account that you want to use as data collecting account, or create a new user.

Step 4 – Make sure you have disabled multi-factor authentication for this account.

Step 5 – Expand Directory role and select the role you need (for example, Global admin or any other privileged role).

Remember, In Microsoft Graph API, Microsoft Entra ID Graph API, and Microsoft Entra ID PowerShell, the Global admin role is identified as Company Administrator.

Step 6 – Click OK.

Step 7 – In Auditor, create a monitoring plan for auditing Microsoft Entra ID and specify this account with this privileged role on the Specify the account for collecting data step.

Step 8 – Wait until initial data collection completes.

Step 9 – Open Microsoft Entra ID portal and remove the privileged role from the account.

Step 10 – Assign a less-privileged role to this account.

A less privileged role has now been assigned to the account.

Assigning Application Permissions Using Manifest

Follow the steps to assign application permissions using Manifest.

Step 1 – Under App registrations, select the newly created app.

Step 2 – Select Manifest on the left.

Step 3 – Locate the requiredResourceAccess property in the manifest and edit it with the following in the square brackets ([]). Then click Save.

Optionally, you can select Download to edit the manifest locally, and then use Upload to reapply it to your application.

Do one of the following:

• For the clear installation of Netwrix Auditor, add roles as described in the Using Modern Authentication with SharePoint Online topic.

• If you upgraded Netwrix Auditor from the version 10.0, replace all existing content under the requiredResourceAccess property.

{
    "resourceAppId": "00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "678536fe-1083-478a-9c59-b99265e6b0d3",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
},
{
    "resourceAppId": "00000003-0000-0000-c000-000000000000",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "1bfefb4e-e0b5-418b-a88f-73c46d2cc8e9",
            "type": "Role"
        },
        {
            "id": "7ab1d382-f21e-4acd-a863-ba3e13f7da61",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
},
{
"resourceAppId": "c5393580-f805-4401-95e8-94b7a6ef2fc2",
"resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "594c1fb6-4f81-4475-ae41-0c394909246c",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
}

Using Modern Authentication with SharePoint Online

This option is recommended for organizations that use modern authentication as the identity management approach, having multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled for their user accounts. In this scenario,Netwrix Auditor will access the cloud-based infrastructure via Microsoft Graph and other modern APIs, being authenticated through a pre-configured Microsoft Entra ID application with appropriate access permissions.

If you plan to implement such scenario, you should register an Microsoft Entra ID app manually and provide its settings to Auditor when configuring a monitored item.

Support for modern authentication will allow you to audit the organizations where MFA is enabled for all users, including service accounts.

Required configuration procedure includes several manual steps, as described in the corresponding section:

Configuring Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing SharePoint Online

To collect data with modern authentication, you should do the following:

Step 1 – Create an Microsoft Entra ID app that will be used for modern authentication. See the Creating and registering a new app in Microsoft Entra ID topic for additional information.

Step 2 – Grant required permissions to that application using Microsoft Entra ID app manifest. See the Granting required permissions topic for additional information.

Step 3 – Configure client secret for that application. See the Configuring client secret topic for additional information.

Step 4 – Obtain tenant ID – you will need it when configuring a monitored item (Microsoft 365 tenant) settings. See the Obtaining tenant name topic for additional information.

Creating and registering a new app in Microsoft Entra ID

You will need to create a dedicated app for each cloud-based data source you plan to audit:

• Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD)
• Exchange Online
• SharePoint Online
• MS Teams

If you plan to audit all of them, you need to create 4 apps.

Follow the steps to register a new Microsoft Entra ID application.

Step 1 – Sign into the Microsoft 365 Admin Center with your Global Administrator, Application Administrator or Cloud Application Administrator account and go to the Microsoft Entra ID admin center.

Step 2 – Under the App registrations section, select New registration.

Step 3 – In the Name field, enter the application name.

Step 4 – In the Supported account types select who can use this application – use the Accounts in this organizational directory only option.

Step 5 – Click the Register button. Application Redirect URI is optional, you can leave it blank.

Step 6 – Your Application (client) ID is now available in the Overview section. Copy it to a safe location.

See the following Microsoft article for additional information on how to create an application and service principal using Microsoft Entra ID Admin portal: Create an Microsoft Entra ID application and service principal that can access resources.

Granting required permissions

You need to grant your new application the required API permissions. Microsoft Entra ID applications can be assigned Delegated or Application permissions:

• Delegated permissions require a signed-in user present who consents to the permissions every time an API call is sent.
• Application permissions are consented by an administrator once granted.

For the newly created app, you should use the Application permissions.

Follow the steps to grant required permissions.

Step 1 – Assign granular Application permissions required for Netwrix Auditor to collect data from the application. To do so, perform the following steps:

• Go to the App registrations and open the app you created to assign Auditor permissions.
• Go to Manage > API permissions and click Add a permission button.
• Assign the required permissions.

Permission assignment will depend on the data you plan to collect: activity data only or both activity and state-in-time data.

To...	Requirement	Comment
Collect activity and State-in-Time data	Microsoft Entra ID app requires the following Application permissions: 1. Microsoft 365 Management APIs - ActivityFeed.Read 2. Microsoft Graph - Application.ReadWrite.All - Directory.Read.All 3. SharePoint - Sites.FullControl.All	To learn how to assign required permissions, see the Configuring Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing SharePoint Online section for additional information. Application.ReadWrite.All is required for automatic rotation of the certificate. Rotating certificates in the Entra ID application is important for the following reasons: - Mitigate Risks from Expired Certificates - Enhance Security - Compliance Requirements - Operational Continuity

NOTE: You can also assign application permissions by editing Microsoft Entra app manifest. See this topic for additional information on how to assign the required permissions. Information about manifest is also described in the following Microsoft article:  Microsoft Entra app manifest.

Step 2 – Grant admin consent to the tenant (that is, for the Microsoft 365 organization whose audit data will be collected by the newly registered app).

See the following Microsoft article for additional information: Grant admin consent in App registrations.

Granting Admin consent to a tenant

Go to the Microsoft Entra ID admin center > Applications > App registrations > API permissions and click Grant admin consent for <tenant name>. When prompted to confirm, click Yes.

NOTE: For Microsoft 365 permissions, go to Request API Permissions > APIs my organization users and type "Microsoft 365" in the search bar.

See the following Microsoft article for additional information on how to create an application and service principal using Microsoft Entra ID Admin portal: Create an Microsoft Entra application and service principal that can access resources.

Configuring client secret

Follow the steps to create a new client secret to be used by the app.

Step 1 – Go to Manage > Certificates & secrets and click New client secret.

Step 2 – Enter the description. From the expiration options select 24 months.

Step 3 – Click Add.

Step 4 – The new secret will be displayed in the list. Click Copy to clipboard icon on the "Value" parameter on the right side of the screen.

See the following Microsoft article for more information on how to add a client secret: Add a client secret.

Obtaining tenant name

Follow the steps to obtain the tenant name.

Step 1 – Navigate to Microsoft Entra ID > Overview.

Step 2 – In the Tenant information locate the Primary domain field, copy its value and store to a safe location.

See the following Microsoft article for additional information on how to obtain tenant name: Locate important IDs for a user.

Then, create a corresponding monitoring plan in Netwrix Auditor and add an item (Microsoft 365 tenant) to it. See the Microsoft Entra ID topic for additional information.

SharePoint Online

Netwrix Auditor relies on native logs for collecting audit data. Therefore, successful change and access auditing requires a certain configuration of native audit settings in the audited environment and on the Auditor console computer. Configuring your IT infrastructure may also include enabling certain built-in Windows services, etc. Proper audit configuration is required to ensure audit data integrity, otherwise your change reports may contain warnings, errors or incomplete audit data.

CAUTION: Folder associated with Netwrix Auditor must be excluded from antivirus scanning. See the Antivirus Exclusions for Netwrix Auditor knowledge base article for additional information.

You can configure your IT Infrastructure for monitoring in the following way:

• Manually – Native audit settings must be adjusted manually to ensure collecting comprehensive and reliable audit data. You can enable Auditor to continually enforce the relevant audit policies or configure them manually:

  • Unified audit log must be enabled for a Tenant. See the Microsoft Turn auditing on or off article for additional information.
  • Prepare a Data Collecting Account as described in the Permissions for SharePoint Online Auditing topic.
  • Configure required protocols and ports, as described in the SharePoint Online Ports topic.

Review a full list of object types and attributes Netwrix Auditor can collect on SharePoint Online. OneDrive for Business changes are reported as SharePoint Online.

Object type	Attributes
Site Collection	- Site Collection administrators
Document	- Name - Permissions - URL - Data categories
Site	- Permissions
Site Collection Sharing Policy	- Sharing with external users - Sharing using anonymous access links
Sharing Policy	- Sharing with external users - Sharing using anonymous access links - External users must accept sharing invitations using the same account that the invitations were sent to - Sharing Domain Restriction mode - Allow domain list - Deny domain list - Require anonymous links expire in days
Group	- Members - Name
Folder	- Permissions
Sharing Invitation	- Expiration date - Shared with
Access Request	- Expiration date

Sensitive data

Starting with the version 10, Netwrix Auditor is able to report about sensitive data in your IT infrastructure. Pay attention to the "Data categories" column in search and reports (for the "Document" object types only). See the Sensitive Data Discovery topic for additional information on how to enable monitoring of sensitive data in Netwrix Auditor.

Permissions for SharePoint Online Auditing

Auditor allows you to audit Microsoft 365 organizations that have established modern authentication as their identity management approach, including support for multi-factor authentication (MFA). To learn more about modern authentication, refer to the following Microsoft article: What is modern authentication.

In this scenario, Netwrix Auditor will access the cloud-based infrastructure via Microsoft Graph and other modern APIs, being authenticated through a pre-configured Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) application with appropriate access permissions. So, you should register an Microsoft Entra ID app and provide its settings to Auditor  when configuring a monitored item.

Authentication for SharePoint Online Auditing

To collect audit data from your SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, Netwrix Auditor uses a dedicated Microsoft Entra ID application and leverages APIs access permissions granted to that app. To register this application and assign required permissions, an Microsoft Entra ID account with an administrative role will be required:

• If Modern Authentication is used:
  • Microsoft Entra ID application should be created manually by user with administrative role and assigned required permissions. This app will allow you to collect both activity and state-in-time data. See the Configuring Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing SharePoint Online section for additional information.
  • You will need to provide the Microsoft Entra ID app settings in the monitored item (Microsoft 365 tenant) properties. See the Microsoft Entra ID topic for additional information.

See the Using Modern Authentication with SharePoint Online topic for additional information.

• If Basic Authentication is used:

  • Microsoft Entra ID application named Netwrix Auditor for Microsoft Entra ID will be created automatically when Netwrix Auditor connects to the monitored item (Microsoft 365 tenant) for the first time. Thus, you will need to prepare an Microsoft 365 user account with an administrative role in Microsoft Entra ID — to create an app and perform initial data collection.

  • Provide this user name and password in the monitored item properties. See the Microsoft Entra ID topic for additional information.

  • Permissions for ongoing data collection will depend on data you plan to collect:

    • To collect both activity (event-based) and state-in-time data, the administrative role will be still needed.
    • To collect activity data only, the privileged role can be revoked from the specified account after the initial data collection.

See the Using Basic Authentication with SharePoint Online topic for additional information.