How to Reset MFA in Office 365 and Secure your Data?

MFA helps you to improve the security of your Office 365. But, if you are having the problem in authenticating. Then resolve the issue as soon as possible. So, in this guide we are going to explain how you can reset MFA in Office 365 and tips to access your data.

Whether you are using Microsoft 365 admin or any other email account. Multi-Factor authentication or MFA provides an additional layer of protection to secure your data. In this, users have to verify their identity by second factor like phone or device. The purpose of this is to protect your account from any unauthorized access especially in cloud environments.

However, the biggest problem arises when you forget your password or are unable to access MFA devices. If you are facing this kind of situation, then it is important to reset user Microsoft 365 MFA.

Reasons to Reconfigure Office 365 Multi-Factor Authentication

Forgetting your password is not the only reason you need to update your MFA. Users have their own reasons to change the settings. Such as.

• If you are not careful and lose your device that is used for multi-factor authentication. Then, resetting is the only option.
• Your Authenticator App accidentally uninstalled or resets which caused the loss of all linking accounts.
• Unexpectedly, you changed your phone number where you can’t receive SMS or calls for MFA authentication.
• You are in a geographic place where the MFA verification is blocked or not working.
• One of the common reasons for this problem is you have forgotten the password of your MFA device.
• Duplicate MFA or corrupt settings may cause you login issues.
• Your organization is switching to different MFA method. For example, switching from SMS to app based authentication.
• When you initially set up your multi-factor authentication. It does not properly configure, now you have to reset it.
• Migrating from tenant to tenant also needs a reset of your MFA.

So there are many reasons as to why you need to modify your multi-factor authentication in Office 365. Now, we are going to see how we can do this.

Change MFA through Office 365 Admin

This is a straightforward method to reset MFA in Microsoft 365. Follow the below steps properly.

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center. Click on the Users.
2. Select the Active users on the left panel. Choose your user and click multi-factor authentication.
   
3. By clicking it, you go to the new page, select single or multiple users and click user MFA settings.
4. Click Require selected users to provide contact methods again. Hit the Save button.
   

Reset MFA in Office 365 with Azure

From the Azure Active Directory, you can reconfigure your Microsoft 365 MFA. For this, you must have the correct Office 365 administration permission.

1. First go to the Azure portal and sign in to the portal using the admin account.
2. Select Azure Active Directory. Then, the Users button.
   
3. A list of all the users will be seen. Find and click on the user which you want to reset.
   
4. Under the Manage section, choose Authentication methods.
   
5. After that, click on the required re-register MFA option.
   
6. If you lost your device, then you can click the Revoke MFA session.

Change your MFA with Microsoft Entra

Microsoft Entra, a cloud based identity and access management service can help you re-register your multi-factor authentication. It deactivates your hardware OATH tokens and recovers the phone numbers, authenticator app, etc. Then, we set up a new MFA method.

1. First, in your web browser, search Microsoft Entra.
2. Then, login to the Microsoft Entra Admin center using your Office 365 account.
3. Once you are signed in, click on the Identity >> Users.
4. Select All users and choose one user you desired to reset the MFA.
   
5. Click on the Authentication Methods. then, Require re-register multifactor authentication.
   
6. Press OK to confirm the removal of OATH tokens.

Once it ‘s done, you sign in and a notification will be sent to you stating more information is required. Set up new MFA settings.

Using PowerShell to Reset MFA in Microsoft 365

With the help of PowerShell, you can also reconfigure Office 365 multi-factor authentication. Here’s how it is done.

1. Install Microsoft Graph Module with this command: Install-Module Microsoft.Graph -Scope CurrentUser.
2. Now, we connect our Office 365 account with Microsoft Graph: Connect-MgGraph -Scopes “User.ReadWrite.All”, “Directory.AccessAsUser.All” (make sure that you must be a Global Admin and have permissions)
3. Unfortunately you cannot directly reset your MFA. However you can revoke the user’s authentication method, by entering these commands.
   • To get user’s ID: $user = Get-MgUser -UserId [email protected]
   • Remove all authentication method: Get-MgUserAuthenticationMethod -UserId $user.Id | ForEach-Object {
     Remove-MgUserAuthenticationMethod -UserId $user.Id -AuthenticationMethodId $_.Id
     }

This method is quite tricky, so a lot of people may have issues using them. Especially for non-technical users. But, the above methods are easy to use.

In Conclusion

There can be many reasons for updating your multi-factor authentication. That’s why, in this guide we will provide you several methods to reset MFA in Office 365. We explained four different solutions with proper steps, so you will not have any problem with them. In addition, we also discuss how in this situation, you cannot get your Microsoft 365 data and having a backup copy will help you.