

The first time you enable the password hash synchronization feature, it performs an initial synchronization of the passwords of all in-scope users. When you synchronize a password, it overwrites the existing cloud password.

You cannot modify the frequency of this process. The password hash synchronization process runs every 2 minutes. However, passwords are synchronized more frequently than the standard directory synchronization window for other attributes. The actual data flow of the password hash synchronization process is similar to the synchronization of user data. Passwords are synchronized on a per-user basis and in chronological order. Extra security processing is applied to the password hash before it is synchronized to the Azure Active Directory authentication service. To synchronize your password, Azure AD Connect sync extracts your password hash from the on-premises Active Directory instance. There is no method to revert the result of a one-way function to the plain text version of a password. A hash value is a result of a one-way mathematical function (the hashing algorithm). The Active Directory domain service stores passwords in the form of a hash value representation, of the actual user password. This article provides information that you need to synchronize your user passwords from an on-premises Active Directory instance to a cloud-based Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) instance.
