Control: 1.1.3 Ensure Sign-in frequency is enabled and browser sessions are not persistent for Administrative users

Description

In complex deployments, organizations might have a need to restrict authentication sessions. Conditional Access policies allow for the targeting of specific user accounts. Some scenarios might include:

Resource access from an unmanaged or shared device
Access to sensitive information from an external network
High-privileged users
Business-critical applications

Ensure Sign-in frequency does not exceed 4 hours for E3 tenants, or 24 hours for E5 tenants using Privileged Identity Management.

Ensure Persistent browser session is set to Never persist.

NOTE: This CA policy can be added to the previous CA policy in this benchmark "Ensure multifactor authentication is enabled for all users in administrative roles"

Forcing a time out for MFA will help ensure that sessions are not kept alive for an indefinite period of time, ensuring that browser sessions are not persistent will help in prevention of drive-by attacks in web browsers, this also prevents creation and saving of session cookies leaving nothing for an attacker to take.

Remediation

To configure Sign-in frequency and browser sessions persistence for Administrative users:

Navigate to Microsoft Entra admin center https://entra.microsoft.com/.
Click to expand Azure Active Directory > Applications Select Enterprise applications.
Under Security, select Conditional Access.
Click New policy.
Click Users and groups.
Under Include select Select users and groups and then select Directory roles.
At a minimum, select the roles in the section below:
Go to Cloud apps or actions > Cloud apps > Include > select All cloud apps (and don't exclude any apps).
Under Access controls > Grant > select Grant access > check Require multi- factor authentication (and nothing else).
Under Session select Sign-in frequency and set to at most 4 hours for E3 tenants. E5 tenants with PIM can be set to a maximum value of 24 hours.
Check Persistent browser session then select Never persistent in the drop- down menu.
For Enable Policy select On and click Save.

At minimum these directory roles should be included for MFA:

Application administrator
Authentication administrator
Billing administrator
Cloud application administrator
Conditional Access administrator
Exchange administrator
Global administrator
Global reader
Helpdesk administrator
Password administrator
Privileged authentication administrator
Privileged role administrator
Security administrator
SharePoint administrator
User administrator

Default Value: The Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) default configuration for user sign-in frequency is a rolling window of 90 days.

Usage

Run the control in your terminal:

powerpipe control run microsoft365_compliance.control.cis_v200_1_1_3

Snapshot and share results via Turbot Pipes:

powerpipe login
powerpipe control run microsoft365_compliance.control.cis_v200_1_1_3 --share

SQL

This control uses a named query:

with users_having_admin_roles as (
  select
    array_agg(role_template_id) as rid
  from
    azuread_directory_role
  where
    display_name like '%Administrator'
),
signin_frequency_enabled as (
  select
    tenant_id,
    count(p.*)
  from
    azuread_conditional_access_policy as p,
    users_having_admin_roles as a
  where
    (p.users -> 'includeRoles')::jsonb ?| (a.rid)
    and (p.sign_in_frequency -> 'isEnabled')::bool
    and (p.persistent_browser -> 'isEnabled')::bool
    and p.persistent_browser ->> 'mode'='never'
    and p.applications -> 'includeApplications' ?& array['All']
    and jsonb_array_length(p.applications -> 'excludeApplications') = 0
    and jsonb_array_length(p.built_in_controls) = 1
    and p.built_in_controls ?& array['mfa']
    and state = 'enabled'
  group by
    tenant_id
),
tenant_list as (
  select
    distinct on (tenant_id) tenant_id,
    _ctx
  from
    azuread_user
)
select
  tenant_id as resource,
  case
    when (select count from signin_frequency_enabled where tenant_id = t.tenant_id) > 0 then 'ok'
    else 'alarm'
  end as status,
  case
    when (select count from signin_frequency_enabled where tenant_id = t.tenant_id) > 0 then tenant_id || ' has sign-in frequency policy enabled.'
    else tenant_id || ' has sign-in frequency policy disabled.'
  end as reason
  , t.tenant_id as tenant_id
from
  tenant_list as t;

Control: 1.1.3 Ensure Sign-in frequency is enabled and browser sessions are not persistent for Administrative users

Description

Remediation

Usage

SQL

Tags