Title

Microsoft Entra ID must use Privileged Identity Management (PIM). (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Emergency accounts are administrator accounts established in response to crisis situations where the need for rapid account activation is required. Therefore, emergency account activation may bypass normal account authorization processes. If these accounts are automatically disabled, system maintenance during emergencies may not be possible, thus adversely affecting system availability. Emergency accounts are different from infrequently used accounts (i.e., local logon accounts used by system administrators when network or normal logon/access is not available). Infrequently used accounts also remain available and are not subject to automatic termination dates. However, an emergency account is normally a different account created for use by vendors or system maintainers. To address access requirements, many application developers choose to integrate their applications with enterprise-level authentication/access mechanisms that meet or exceed access control policy requirements. Such integration allows the application developer to offload those access control functions and focus on core application features and functionality.

Check Content

Verify PIM is in use with just-in-time (JIT) access and employing the principle of least privilege access. 1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least an Authentication Policy Administrator. 2. Search for "Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management". 3. Navigate to "Management" and select "Microsoft Entra roles". 4. Expand the "Manage" menu and select "Assignments". 5. Select the "Active assignments" tab and for each privileged role, verify there are no roles with an end time of "Permanent". If any privileged roles are present with an end time of "Permanent", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure PIM to just-in-time (JIT) access and employ the principle of least privilege access. When assigning privileged roles to accounts, select the assignment type of "Eligible".

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-270335r1085641_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-270335

Group Title: SRG-APP-000234

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.