Just Brand Azure AD Already!

What says more to employees and guest users that you’re an established and capable organization than having your own branded Azure AD portal?

As trivial as it may seem, a branded Azure AD portal emphasizes the efficiency and technical capabilities of your organization. It announces (without saying a word) your attention to detail—care that will be passed on in the services you offer, the work you perform, and the products you sell.

Branding your portal may even provide an additional level of security. How, you ask? Well, many phishing campaigns redirect users to login to their Office 365 accounts. One catch! The login pages are naturally Azure AD’s default sign-in pages. There you have it! Users will notice the sign-in page isn’t their company’s branded sign-in page, and thus will raise a red flag (or at least an eyebrow). This may sound far-fetched, but if it can prevent a slip-up, or cause enough concern for a user to notify the IT department, then it’s more than worth it.

Ready to brand your organization’s portal? It’s very simple, here’s all it takes:

Prerequisites

• Azure AD Basic or any of the Azure AD Premium offerings.
• The images listed in the table below.

* Note: this image isn’t necessary if your typical logo already looks good against a dark background.

The next important item that demands your attention is the background color of the sign-in page. The color you choose dictates the color used when a user accessing the sign-in page has a low bandwidth connection that doesn’t permit loading of the wallpaper. Microsoft’s recommendation is that the color reflects the primary color of the logo or the organization color. This color must be in Hex Code. To make the sign-in page more user friendly, add a “Username hint” and “Sign-in page text.” These settings are text-only.

Let’s brand the tenant!

Below are four simple steps to brand your Azure AD portal:

1. Sign in to the Azure Portal as a global admininstrator
2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory
3. Navigate to Company Branding, and select Configure
4. Select the images you gathered previously
5. Click Save

My goal is to inspire you to brand your Azure AD. Branding the Azure AD tenant is very low-hanging fruit. It not only sends a clear message about the organization’s technical capabilities and quality of work, it’s also an incredibly simple way to add some additional security.

I’ve authored several blogs on various aspects of Azure and Office 365. Please feel free to check them out here. Additionally, Anexinet offers a Cloud Strategy Kickstart to help accelerate your journey to Azure or other platforms. Lastly, if you have a question about anything Cloud, Azure or Office 365 related, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to help you get started.