Cisco Anyconnect Azure



If you are looking for a MFA solution for Cisco AnyConnect then there is a good chance that you have heard of Duo and Azure AD. In this blog post I will guide you through the configuration steps required to set up Azure MFA with Cisco AnyConnect. Having Cisco ISE is optional for this to work.

  1. Cisco Anyconnect Azure Mfa
  2. Cisco Anyconnect Azure Ad Integration
  3. Cisco Anyconnect Azure Login
  4. Cisco Anyconnect Azure Access

Scenario

Cisco anyconnect azure client
  • You want to authenticate the AnyConnect users against Azure SSO/SAML to enforce MFA.
  • Authorization should happen against Cisco ISE to provide role-based access using SGT tags << optional

Assumptions

Cisco AnyConnect. This supports a feature called “Start before logon” (SBL) that integrates with the Windows logon screen using PLAP. This feature needs to be explicitly enabled as described in the Cisco docs. Azure MFA Server integrates with your Cisco® ASA VPN appliance to provide additional security for Cisco AnyConnect® VPN logins and portal access. You can use either the LDAP or RADIUS protocol. Select one of the following to download the detailed step-by-step configuration guides. Citrix NetScaler SSL VPN and Azure MFA Server. Configure Azure AD SAML SSO with Cisco ASA AnyConnect VPN 11th February 2020 As the 'cloud only' model continues to grow, we are starting to see an influx of environments where a legacy on-premise Active Directory domain does not exist.

  • You already have a working ASA AnyConnect setup
  • Authentication and authorization works with ISE
  • Users and groups are already synced with Azure AD
  • Cisco ISE is configured with Authorization policies for each AD group.
  • ISE advertises SGT mappings to ASA via SXP
  • ACLs are configured on ASA with SGs
  • ASA running 9.8 or later code, and AnyConnect clients will be 4.6+

Adding Cisco AnyConnect from the gallery

To configure the integration of Cisco AnyConnect into Azure AD, you need to add Cisco AnyConnect from the gallery to your list of managed SaaS apps.

  • Sign in to the Azure portal
  • On the left navigation pane, select the Azure Active Directory service.
  • Navigate to Enterprise Applications and then select All Applications.
  • Select New Application
  • type Cisco AnyConnect in the search box.
  • Select Cisco AnyConnect from results

Configure Azure AD SSO

Configure Azure AD SSO

  • Go to AnyConnect application and then select Set up single sign on

  • Set up single sign-on with SAML page, enter the values for the following fields:

In the Identifier text box, type Cisco ASA RA VPN 'Tunnel group' name

In the Reply URL text box, type Cisco ASA RA VPN 'Tunnel group' name

  • On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, find Certificate (Base64) and select Download to download the certificate file and save it on your computer.

  • On the Set up Cisco AnyConnect section, copy all three URLs.

Cisco ASA configuration

Cisco Anyconnect Azure
Assume the tunnel-group name is 'company-vpn' , VPN url is 'vpn.mycompany.com' and the trust-point of the identity certificate is 'my-public-cert'

VPN Identity Certificate - Usually a wild card certificate for *.mycompany.com that you buy from a CA.

Create a trust-point and import the SAML certificate you downloaded in the previous step.

Configure SAML IdP

For Service Provider (SP) certificate you can use the identity or wild card certificate associated with your VPN url (vpn.mycompany.com) This certificate is usually issued by public CA.

Apply SAML authentication to the VPN tunnel group

Now users should be able to login to AnyConnect via SSO. But we want to make sure that ISE is performing the Authorization.

To achieve this we need to use the authorization feature on the ASA. This will enable ASA to authenticate users against Azure AD and authorize against ISE.

When the authorization request comes to ISE, it tries to process a full authentication + authorization. There is no password (because Azure handled it already) in the packet so the authentication fails.

To get around the issue we need to set the ISE authentication source to Internal Users, and told ISE to continue on both Auth fail and user not found. This allows ISE to process just authorization.

ASA configuration

Cisco ISE configuration

This would allow ISE to process the authorization and everything should work correctly. You can enforce MFA using Azure 'Conditional Access'.

Reference
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In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate Cisco AnyConnect with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). When you integrate Cisco AnyConnect with Azure AD, you can:

  • Control in Azure AD who has access to Cisco AnyConnect.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to Cisco AnyConnect with their Azure AD accounts.
  • Manage your accounts in one central location - the Azure portal.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need the following items:

  • An Azure AD subscription. If you don't have a subscription, you can get a free account.
  • Cisco AnyConnect single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.
Azure

Scenario description

Anyconnect

In this tutorial, you configure and test Azure AD SSO in a test environment.

  • Cisco AnyConnect supports IDP initiated SSO

Adding Cisco AnyConnect from the gallery

To configure the integration of Cisco AnyConnect into Azure AD, you need to add Cisco AnyConnect from the gallery to your list of managed SaaS apps.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal using either a work or school account, or a personal Microsoft account.
  2. On the left navigation pane, select the Azure Active Directory service.
  3. Navigate to Enterprise Applications and then select All Applications.
  4. To add new application, select New application.
  5. In the Add from the gallery section, type Cisco AnyConnect in the search box.
  6. Select Cisco AnyConnect from results panel and then add the app. Wait a few seconds while the app is added to your tenant.

Configure and test Azure AD SSO for Cisco AnyConnect

Configure and test Azure AD SSO with Cisco AnyConnect using a test user called B.Simon. For SSO to work, you need to establish a link relationship between an Azure AD user and the related user in Cisco AnyConnect.

To configure and test Azure AD SSO with Cisco AnyConnect, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Azure AD SSO - to enable your users to use this feature.
    1. Create an Azure AD test user - to test Azure AD single sign-on with B.Simon.
    2. Assign the Azure AD test user - to enable B.Simon to use Azure AD single sign-on.
  2. Configure Cisco AnyConnect SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
    1. Create Cisco AnyConnect test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in Cisco AnyConnect that is linked to the Azure AD representation of user.
  3. Test SSO - to verify whether the configuration works.

Configure Azure AD SSO

Follow these steps to enable Azure AD SSO in the Azure portal.

  1. In the Azure portal, on the Cisco AnyConnect application integration page, find the Manage section and select single sign-on.

  2. On the Select a single sign-on method page, select SAML.

  3. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, click the edit/pen icon for Basic SAML Configuration to edit the settings.

  4. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, enter the values for the following fields:

    a. In the Identifier text box, type a URL using the following pattern:< YOUR CISCO ANYCONNECT VPN VALUE >

    b. In the Reply URL text box, type a URL using the following pattern:< YOUR CISCO ANYCONNECT VPN VALUE >

    Note

    These values are not real. Update these values with the actual Identifier and Reply URL. Contact Cisco AnyConnect Client support team to get these values. You can also refer to the patterns shown in the Basic SAML Configuration section in the Azure portal.

  5. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, find Certificate (Base64) and select Download to download the certificate file and save it on your computer.

  6. On the Set up Cisco AnyConnect section, copy the appropriate URL(s) based on your requirement.

Note

If you would like to on board multiple TGTs of the server then you need to add multiple instance of the Cisco AnyConnect application from the gallery. Also you can choose to upload your own certificate in Azure AD for all these application instances. That way you can have same certificate for the applications but you can configure different Identifier and Reply URL for every application.

Create an Azure AD test user

In this section, you'll create a test user in the Azure portal called B.Simon.

  1. From the left pane in the Azure portal, select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select All users.
  2. Select New user at the top of the screen.
  3. In the User properties, follow these steps:
    1. In the Name field, enter B.Simon.
    2. In the User name field, enter the username@companydomain.extension. For example, B.Simon@contoso.com.
    3. Select the Show password check box, and then write down the value that's displayed in the Password box.
    4. Click Create.

Assign the Azure AD test user

In this section, you'll enable B.Simon to use Azure single sign-on by granting access to Cisco AnyConnect.

  1. In the Azure portal, select Enterprise Applications, and then select All applications.
  2. In the applications list, select Cisco AnyConnect.
  3. In the app's overview page, find the Manage section and select Users and groups.
  4. Select Add user, then select Users and groups in the Add Assignment dialog.
  5. In the Users and groups dialog, select B.Simon from the Users list, then click the Select button at the bottom of the screen.
  6. If you are expecting a role to be assigned to the users, you can select it from the Select a role dropdown. If no role has been set up for this app, you see 'Default Access' role selected.
  7. In the Add Assignment dialog, click the Assign button.

Cisco Anyconnect Azure Mfa

Configure Cisco AnyConnect SSO

  1. You are going to do this on the CLI first, you might come back through and do an ASDM walk-through at another time.

  2. Connect to your VPN Appliance, you are going to be using an ASA running 9.8 code train, and your VPN clients will be 4.6+.

  3. First you will create a Trustpoint and import our SAML cert.

  4. The following commands will provision your SAML IdP.

  5. Now you can apply SAML Authentication to a VPN Tunnel Configuration.

    Note

    There is a feature with the SAML IdP configuration - If you make changes to the IdP config you need to remove the saml identity-provider config from your Tunnel Group and re-apply it for the changes to become effective.

Create Cisco AnyConnect test user

Cisco Anyconnect Azure Ad Integration

In this section, you create a user called Britta Simon in Cisco AnyConnect. Work with Cisco AnyConnect support team to add the users in the Cisco AnyConnect platform. Users must be created and activated before you use single sign-on.

Test SSO

In this section, you test your Azure AD single sign-on configuration with following options.

Cisco Anyconnect Azure Login

  • Click on Test this application in Azure portal and you should be automatically signed in to the Cisco AnyConnect for which you set up the SSO
  • You can use Microsoft Access Panel. When you click the Cisco AnyConnect tile in the Access Panel, you should be automatically signed in to the Cisco AnyConnect for which you set up the SSO. For more information about the Access Panel, see Introduction to the Access Panel.

Next Steps

Cisco Anyconnect Azure Access

Once you configure Cisco AnyConnect you can enforce session control, which protects exfiltration and infiltration of your organization’s sensitive data in real time. Session control extends from Conditional Access. Learn how to enforce session control with Microsoft Cloud App Security.