Increase Privileges

Routine reviews of user accounts and their associated privileges and permissions should be conducted to identify overly-permissive accounts, or accounts that are no longer required to be active.

The Principle of Least Privilege should be enforced, and period reviews of permissions conducted to ensure that accounts have the minimum level of access required to complete duties as per their role.

An agent capable of User Activity Monitoring (UAM) is a software agent installed on organization endpoints (such as laptops); typically, User Activity Monitoring agents are only deployed on endpoints where a human user Is expected to conduct the activity.

The User Activity Monitoring agent will typically record Operating System, application, and network activity occurring on an endpoint, with a focus on activity that is or can be conducted by a human user. The purpose of this monitoring is to identify undesirable and/or malicious activity being conducted by a human user (in this context, an Insider Threat).

Typical User Activity Monitoring platforms operate in an agent/server model where activity logs are sent to a server for automatic correlation against a rule set. This rule set is used to surface activity that may represent Insider Threat related activity such as capturing screenshots, copying data, compressing files or installing risky software.

Other platforms providing related functionality are frequently referred to as User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) platforms.

An agent capable of User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) is a software agent installed on organizational endpoints (such as laptops). Typically, User Activity Monitoring agents are only deployed on endpoints where a human user is expected to conduct the activity.

The User Behaviour Analytics agent will typically record Operating System, application, and network activity occurring on an endpoint, focusing on activity that is or can be conducted by a human user. Typically, User Behaviour Analytics platforms operate in an agent/server model where activity logs are sent to a server for automatic analysis. In the case of User Behaviour Analytics, this analysis will typically be conducted against a baseline that has previously been established.

A User Behaviour Analytic platform will typically conduct a period of ‘baselining’ when the platform is first installed. This baselining period establishes the normal behavior parameters for an organization’s users, which are used to train a Machine Learning (ML) model. This ML model can then be later used to automatically identify activity that is predicted to be an anomaly, which is hoped to surface user behavior that is undesirable, risky, or malicious.

Other platforms providing related functionality are frequently referred to as User Activity Monitoring (UAM) platforms.

Within the Microsoft Entra admin center, the Resource audit can be reviewed to identify PIM elevations for users, including key information such as the requestor user, subject user, action, domain, and primary target (role assigned/removed). This can aid investigators by providing an audit trail for PIM elevations and the duration for which an eligible role was attached to a user account.

The following URL can be used to view this activity log, provided the investigator's account has the Privileged Role Administrator role assigned, or a role with higher privileges: https://entra.microsoft.com/#view/Microsoft_Azure_PIMCommon/ResourceMenuBlade/~/Audit/resourceId//resourceType/tenant/provider/aadroles