Privileged Identity Management (PIM)

Privileged identity management provides time-based and approval-based role activation to mitigate the risks of excessive, unnecessary, or misused access to important resources in your organization
Protect an administrative account
Manage, control, and monitor access to important resources in your organization
Service Support Microsoft Entra ID, Azure, and other Microsoft Online Services such as Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Intune
Reasons to use
Improved security: PIM helps reduce the risk of security breaches by limiting the exposure of privileged accounts and enforcing just-in-time access when needed.
Compliance and audit capabilities: PIM provides detailed logs and reports to help organizations meet compliance requirements and monitor privileged account activity.
Minimized standing administrative privileges: PIM promotes the principle of least privilege by allowing users to have elevated access only when necessary for specific tasks.
Reduced attack surface: With PIM, the number of active privileged accounts is reduced, lowering the potential impact of security incidents.
License requirements
Microsoft Entra P2 License
What does it do?
It provides a centralized, time-based approach to managing privileged access, allowing administrators to grant just-in-time access to privileged resources, reducing the risk of security breaches and unauthorized access
Just-in-time (JIT) access: Administrators can grant temporary access to privileged resources, ensuring users only have elevated permissions when needed for specific tasks.
Approval workflows: PIM supports approval workflows for granting privileged access, requiring multiple users to approve access requests before they are granted.
Access reviews: PIM allows administrators to conduct regular access reviews, helping to identify and remove unnecessary or outdated privileged access assignments.
Auditing and reporting: PIM provides detailed audit logs and reports to help organizations monitor privileged access activity and ensure compliance with regulations and internal policies.
Role-based access control (RBAC): PIM enables administrators to manage privileged access based on roles, simplifying administration and reducing the complexity of managing individual user permissions
Who can do
Privileged Role Administrator or Global Administrator
PIM structure
Assign
Assigning roles to members
The type of the assignment
Eligible
Eligible Role Assignment:
user or group to request activation of a role when needed. This type of assignment helps enforce the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users have elevated access only during the period in which they require it. Eligible role assignments can be subject to approval workflows and multi-factor authentication requirements
Active
provide immediate access to privileged roles without requiring any action from the user ,
When users are made eligible for a role, they need to follow these steps to use it:
Activate the role assignment before they can use the role.
Choose how long they want to use the role (activation duration) within the maximum time set by the administrators.
Provide a reason for their activation request
Extend and renew assignments
Extend assignments: Administrators can choose to extend an active assignment’s duration if the user still needs access to the role beyond the initial activation period.
Renew assignments: When an active assignment’s duration is about to expire or has expired, administrators can renew the assignment by reactivating it. Users can then continue using the privileged role