Using Basic Authentication with MS Teams

With basic authentication, your MS Teams organization will be accessed on behalf of a user. You will need to provide user name and password in the monitored item properties. Auditor will use this account to access the Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) organization, automatically create a Microsoft Entra ID app with required permissions, and perform initial data collection. For that, the user account will need an administrative role in the cloud-based infrastructure.

Required Roles and Permissions

To...	Requirement	Comment
Create Microsoft Entra ID application, run initial data collection, and perform Auditor upgrade from previous version	Any of the following role combinations: - Application Administrator & Privileged Role Administrator & Teams Administrator OR - Cloud Application Administrator & Privileged Role Administrator & Teams Administrator OR - Global Admin	Prepare a user account and specify it in the monitored item properties. See the MS Teams topic for additional information.
Collect activity data	Any of the following roles: Application Administrator & Teams Administrator OR Cloud Application Administrator & Teams Administrator OR Global Admin

Assigning a Privileged Role for Microsoft Entra ID 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.

See the Permissions for Microsoft Entra ID Auditing topic for additional information.

Assign 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 ([]).

Step 4 – Click Save.

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

Depending on your installation type, do one of the following:

For the clear installation, add roles as described below.
If you upgraded Auditor from previous version, replace all existing content under the requiredResourcdAccess property.

{
    "resourceAppId": "00000003-0000-0000-c000-000000000000",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "332a536c-c7ef-4017-ab91-336970924f0d",
            "type": "Role"
        },
        {
            "id": "b0afded3-3588-46d8-8b3d-9842eff778da",
            "type": "Role"
        },
        {
            "id": "1bfefb4e-e0b5-418b-a88f-73c46d2cc8e9",
            "type": "Role"
        },
        {
            "id": "7ab1d382-f21e-4acd-a863-ba3e13f7da61",
            "type": "Role"
        },
        {
            "id": "660b7406-55f1-41ca-a0ed-0b035e182f3e",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
},
{
    "resourceAppId": "00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "678536fe-1083-478a-9c59-b99265e6b0d3",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
},
{
    "resourceAppId": "c5393580-f805-4401-95e8-94b7a6ef2fc2",
    "resourceAccess": [
        {
            "id": "594c1fb6-4f81-4475-ae41-0c394909246c",
            "type": "Role"
        }
    ]
}

Using Modern Authentication with MS Teams

Modern authentication allows you to audit MS Teams environments without using an account with basic authentication. The configuration procedure includes several manual steps, as described below.

Access MS Teams Using Modern Authentication

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, Auditor will access the cloud-based infrastructure via Microsoft Graph and other modern APIs, being authenticated through a preconfigured Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) application with appropriate access permissions.

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

Configure the Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing MS Teams

Follow the steps to use a data collecting account with modern authentication:

Step 1 – Create an Microsoft Entra ID app that will be used for modern authentication. See the Create and Register a New App in Microsoft Entra ID section for additional information.

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

Step 3 – Configure client secret for that application. See the Configure Client Secret section for additional information.

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

Create and Register 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.

Grant 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.

Requirement	Comment
Microsoft Entra ID app requires the following Application permissions: 1. Microsoft Graph - Application.ReadWrite.All - AuditLog.Read.All - Directory.Read.All - Sites.Read.All - TeamMember.Read.All 2. Microsoft 365 Management APIs - ActivityFeed.Read 3. SharePoint - Sites.FullControl.All	To learn how to assign required permissions, see the Configure the Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing MS Teams topic for additional information.

NOTE: You can also assign application permissions by editing Microsoft Entra app manifest. See the Using Modern Authentication with MS Teams 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.

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.

Configure 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.

Add MS Teams monitoring plan

Follow the steps to add MS Teams monitoring plan in the Netwrix Auditor.

Step 1 – In the Monitoring Plans, click Add Plan button.

Step 2 – Create a monitoring plan with the MS Teams data source.

Step 3 – Add the "Microsoft 365 tenant" item.

Step 4 – Click Select.

Step 5 – Enter your tenant name.

Step 6 – Choose modern authentication.

Step 7 – Enter Application ID and Application secret you have created before.

Step 8 – Click Add.

MS Teams monitoring plan has been added to Auditor and initial data collection has begun.

Obtain 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.

MS Teams

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 one of the following ways:

Automatically through a monitoring plan – This is a recommended method. If you select to automatically configure audit in the target environment, your current audit settings will be checked on each data collection and adjusted if necessary.
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 Teams Auditing topic.
- Configure required protocols and ports, as described in the Teams Ports topic.

Auditor can monitor for operations with MS Teams entities, collect state-in-time snapshots and track changes to the object attributes. This section provides detailed information on these activities.

Starting with the version 10.5, 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). Refer to Sensitive Data Discovery for detailed instructions on how to enable monitoring of sensitive data in Auditor.

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

Object type	Attributes
Document	- Name - Permissions - URL - Data categories
Team	- Members - Name
Folder	- Permissions

Permissions for Teams 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.

NOTE: In some scenarios multi-factor authentication cannot be enabled for Auditor service account. If so, you will need to configure an account with basic authentication to access Microsoft Entra ID or Microsoft 365 tenant.

For Microsoft Teams

Before you start creating a monitoring plan to audit your Active Directory, plan for the account that will be used for data collection – it should meet the requirements listed in this topic. Then you will provide this account in the monitoring plan wizard (or in the monitored item settings).

Refer to the following topics to access Microsoft teams:

Required Roles and Permissions​

Assigning a Privileged Role for Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365​

Assign Application Permissions Using Manifest

Using Modern Authentication with MS Teams

Access MS Teams Using Modern Authentication​

Configure the Microsoft Entra ID App for Auditing MS Teams​

Create and Register a New App in Microsoft Entra ID​

Grant Required Permissions​

Grant Admin Consent to a Tenant​

Configure Client Secret​

Add MS Teams monitoring plan​

Obtain Tenant Name​