How do I access my account if My Authenticator was deleted and reinstalled and now requires me to do the same two-step verification process, when I'm unable to get on either device??.

Question

I deleted and reinstalled my Authenticator app and it is still asking me to login, but it didn't save my account on the Authenticator app. Now the issue arouse that I can't verify on the app nor access my work account. How am I supposed to access my account if I can't verify it?

Answer 1

@Jordan, Arianna

Thank you for posting this in Microsoft Q&A.

As I understand you had to reinstall Microsoft authenticator app due to undefined circumstances.

Now you do not see your account in authenticator app, and you are unable to access Azure services

If you don't have access to your account in authenticator app, then you will not be able to login to Azure portal. MFA is an extra layer of authentication used for security.

There is no easy way to get the MFA registration reset because it becomes easy for any other user to reset your MFA and add his/her phone number in it.

There is no option where you can reset your MFA by your own. You will have to contact Azure AD administrator in your organization to get MFA reset for your account.

If you don’t know who the admins are then you can follow below steps to know who the admin in your tenant is.

There is a PowerShell way to find global admin in your Azure AD. However, to use PowerShell as well you will have to authenticate yourself first. For authentication again it will prompt for MFA to be completed.

I would suggest you ask one of your colleagues to perform below steps and share the global admin details with you so that you can contact admin and get your MFA registered.

• Open Windows PowerShell as administrator.

• Run command “Install-Module azuread”

• Once installed you can run command “Connect-AzureAD” and enter user credentials once it asks for.

• Once you login, you can run command “Get-AzureADDirectoryRole”.

• From the output you can copy the object ID of Global administrator

• Run command “Get-AzureADDirectoryRoleMember -ObjectId "Paste the object ID of global admin that was copied earlier"

• You will get the list of users with global admin role assigned.

Now you can contact any global admin from the list and ask him to perform below steps to reset your MFA so that you can re-register for authenticator app,

• Admin has to login to Azure portal and access Azure active directory.

• Once done they have to go to users blade on the left.

• Click on Authentication methods and click on “Require re-register multifactor authentication”.

• Now when you try to login to Azure services it will prompt you to register for MFA again.

If you are the only global admin on the account and are blocked entirely, you can reach out to our support team. You can look into below article to get support numbers depending on your country.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/global-customer-service-phone-numbers-c0389ade-5640-e588-8b0e-28de8afeb3f2

or creating a ticket through a different account:  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/get-help-support?view=o365-worldwide#phone-support

Create a ticket with Microsoft support team. Give them the tenant ID which is locked out in your description. Tell them that no admin account has access anymore and your partners also have no access anymore.

Once you create a ticket with support team you will have to work with our data protection team. You will have to first prove your identity against your tenant for security purpose. Post that this team will help you with help you in getting access to your tenant or unlock your account depending on your scenario.

Also, for the future, you can create an emergency access account (break glass) in Azure AD. This account will help prevent being accidentally locked out of your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) organization because you can't sign in for any reason.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/roles/security-emergency-access

Problems with two-step verification for Azure B2C accounts - Microsoft Q&A

 

Let me know if you have any further questions on this.

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