In SC-300, Azure AD Identity Protection is the prescribed control to “automatically detect and remediate externally leaked credentials.” That specific user risk—Leaked credentials—relies on Microsoft comparing known breached username/password pairs with what Azure AD can evaluate. The study materials explain that Identity Protection “detects leaked credentials when Microsoft finds a match with the user’s current credentials,” and also note that password hash synchronization (PHS) can be enabled even if your sign-in method is Pass-through Authentication or federation. A common exam call-out is that without PHS, Azure AD has no hash to compare, so the leaked-credential signal is unavailable. Enabling PHS (you can keep PTA as the active sign-in method) allows Identity Protection to raise user risk and enforce policy actions such as require password change or block access. By contrast, Azure AD Password Protection addresses banned/weak passwords at change time, not breached-credential telemetry; federation choices (e.g., PingFederate) don’t deliver the leaked-credential signal; and authentication method policy controls how users perform MFA (e.g., methods) rather than whether leaked credentials are detected. Therefore, to meet the requirement to “automatically detect and remediate externally leaked credentials,” the minimum correct step is to enable password hash synchronization while retaining PTA—exactly as recommended in SC-300 guidance.