azure_compliance

Azure Compliance

Run pipelines to detect and correct Azure resources that are non-compliant with CIS benchmarks.

azure_cis

The CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Security Benchmark provides prescriptive guidance for establishing a secure baseline configuration for Microsoft Azure.

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steampipe.default

database

default

The name of the notifier to use for sending notification messages.

notifier

The verbosity level of notification messages to send. Valid options are 'verbose', 'info', 'error'.

notification_level

header

run_pipelines

CIS v3.0.0

This section contains recommendations for configuring Azure Miscellaneous.

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10 Miscellaneous

Resource Manager Locks provide a way for administrators to lock down Azure resources to prevent deletion of, or modifications to, a resource. These locks sit outside of the Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) hierarchy and, when applied, will place restrictions on the resource for all users.

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List of notifiers to be used for obtaining action/approval decisions.

approvers

10.1 Ensure that Resource Locks are set for Mission-Critical Azure Resources

run_pipeline

This section contains recommendations for configuring Azure Identity.

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2 Identity

Ensure that users are notified on their primary and alternate emails on password resets.

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2.10 Ensure that 'Notify users on password resets?' is set to 'Yes'

Ensure that all Global Administrators are notified if any other administrator resets their password.

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2.11 Ensure That 'Notify all admins when other admins reset their password?' is set to 'Yes'

Require administrators to provide consent for applications before use.

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2.12 Ensure 'User consent for applications' is set to 'Do not allow user consent'

Allow users to provide consent for selected permissions when a request is coming from a verified publisher.

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2.13 Ensure 'User consent for applications' Is Set To 'Allow for Verified Publishers'

Require administrators or appropriately delegated users to register third-party applications.

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2.14 Ensure That 'Users Can Register Applications' Is Set to 'No'

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2.15 Ensure That 'Guest users access restrictions' is set to 'Guest user access is restricted to properties and memberships of their own directory objects'

Restrict invitations to users with specific administrative roles only.

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2.16 Ensure that 'Guest invite restrictions' is set to 'Only users assigned to specific admin roles can invite guest users'

Restrict access to the Azure AD administration portal to administrators only.

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2.17 Ensure That 'Restrict access to Microsoft Entra admin center' is Set to 'Yes'

Restrict access to group web interface in the Access Panel portal.

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2.18 Ensure that 'Restrict user ability to access groups features in the Access Pane' is Set to 'Yes'

Restrict security group creation to administrators only.

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2.19 Ensure that 'Users can create security groups in Azure portals, API or PowerShell' is set to 'No'

Security defaults in Microsoft Entra ID make it easier to be secure and help protect your organization. Security defaults contain preconfigured security settings for common attacks. Security defaults is available to everyone. The goal is to ensure that all organizations have a basic level of security enabled at no extra cost. You may turn on security defaults in the Azure portal.

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2.1.1 Ensure Security Defaults is enabled on Microsoft Entra ID

Enable multi-factor authentication for all roles, groups, and users that have write access or permissions to Azure resources.

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2.1.2 Ensure that 'Multi-Factor Auth Status' is 'Enabled' for all Privileged Users

Enable multi-factor authentication for all non-privileged users.

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2.1.3 Ensure that 'Multi-Factor Auth Status' is 'Enabled' for all Non-Privileged Users

Do not allow users to remember multi-factor authentication on devices.

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2.1.4 Ensure that 'Allow users to remember multi-factor authentication on devices they trust' is Disabled

Restrict security group management to administrators only.

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2.20 Ensure that 'Owners can manage group membership requests in the Access Panel' is set to 'No'

Restrict Microsoft 365 group creation to administrators only.

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2.21 Ensure that 'Users can create Microsoft 365 groups in Azure portals, API or PowerShell' is set to 'No'

Joining or registering devices to the active directory should require Multi-factor authentication.

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2.22 Ensure that 'Require Multi-Factor Authentication to register or join devices with Microsoft Entra ID' is set to 'Yes'

The principle of least privilege should be followed and only necessary privileges should be assigned instead of allowing full administrative access.

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2.23 Ensure That No Custom Subscription Administrator Roles Exist

Resource locking is a powerful protection mechanism that can prevent inadvertent modification/deletion of resources within Azure subscriptions/Resource Groups and is a recommended NIST configuration.

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2.24 Ensure a Custom Role is Assigned Permissions for Administering Resource Locks

Users who are set as subscription owners are able to make administrative changes to the subscriptions and move them into and out of Azure Active Directories.

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2.25 Ensure That `Subscription leaving Microsoft Entra ID directory` and `Subscription entering Microsoft Entra ID directory` Is Set To 'Permit No One'

This recommendation aims to maintain a balance between security and operational efficiency by ensuring that a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 4 users are assigned the Global Administrator role in Microsoft Entra ID. Having at least two Global Administrators ensures redundancy, while limiting the number to four reduces the risk of excessive privileged access.

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2.26 Ensure fewer than 5 users have global administrator assignment

Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access allows an organization to configure Named locations and configure whether those locations are trusted or untrusted. These settings provide organizations the means to specify Geographical locations for use in conditional access policies, or define actual IP addresses and IP ranges and whether or not those IP addresses and/or ranges are trusted by the organization.

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2.2.1 Ensure Trusted Locations Are Defined

Conditional Access Policies can be used to block access from geographic locations that are deemed out-of-scope for your organization or application. The scope and variables for this policy should be carefully examined and defined.

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2.2.2 Ensure that an exclusionary Geographic Access Policy is considered

Conditional Access Policies can be used to prevent the Device code authentication flow. Device code flow should be permitted only for users that regularly perform duties that explicitly require the use of Device Code to authenticate, such as utilizing Azure with PowerShell.

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2.2.3 Ensure that an exclusionary Device code flow policy is considered

For designated users, they will be prompted to use their multi-factor authentication (MFA) process on login.

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2.2.4 Ensure that A Multi-factor Authentication Policy Exists for Administrative Groups

For designated users, they will be prompted to use their multi-factor authentication (MFA) process on logins.

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2.2.5 Ensure that A Multi-factor Authentication Policy Exists for All Users

Entra ID tracks the behavior of sign-in events. If the Entra ID domain is licensed with P2, the sign-in behavior can be used as a detection mechanism for additional scrutiny during the sign-in event. If this policy is set up, then Risky Sign-in events will prompt users to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) tokens on login for additional verification.

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2.2.6 Ensure Multi-factor Authentication is Required for Risky Sign-ins

This recommendation ensures that users accessing the Windows Azure Service Management API (i.e. Azure Powershell, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager API, etc.) are required to use multifactor authentication (MFA) credentials when accessing resources through the Windows Azure Service Management API.

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2.2.7 Ensure Multifactor Authentication is Required for Windows Azure Service Management API

This recommendation ensures that users accessing Microsoft Admin Portals (i.e. Microsoft 365 Admin, Microsoft 365 Defender, Exchange Admin Center, Azure Portal, etc.) are required to use multifactor authentication (MFA) credentials when logging into an Admin Portal.

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2.2.8 Ensure Multifactor Authentication is Required to access Microsoft Admin Portals

Require administrators or appropriately delegated users to create new tenants.

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2.3 Ensure that 'Restrict non-admin users from creating tenants' is set to 'Yes'

Microsoft Entra ID has native and extended identity functionality allowing you to invite people from outside your organization to be guest users in your cloud account and sign in with their own work, school, or social identities.

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2.4 Ensure Guest Users Are Reviewed on a Regular Basis

Ensures that two alternate forms of identification are provided before allowing a password reset.

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2.5 Ensure That 'Number of methods required to reset' is set to '2'

The account lockout threshold determines how many failed login attempts are permitted prior to placing the account in a locked-out state and initiating a variable lockout duration.

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2.6 Ensure that account 'Lockout Threshold' is less than or equal to '10'

The account lockout duration value determines how long an account retains the status of lockout, and therefore how long before a user can continue to attempt to login after passing the lockout threshold.

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2.7 Ensure that account 'Lockout duration in seconds' is greater than or equal to '60'

Microsoft Azure provides a Global Banned Password policy that applies to Azure administrative and normal user accounts. This is not applied to user accounts that are synced from an on-premise Active Directory unless Azure AD Connect is used and you enable EnforceCloudPasswordPolicyForPasswordSyncedUsers. Please see the list in default values on the specifics of this policy. To further password security, it is recommended to further define a custom banned password policy

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2.8 Ensure that a Custom Bad Password List is set to 'Enforce' for your Organization

Ensure that the number of days before users are asked to re-confirm their authentication information is not set to 0.

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2.9 Ensure that 'Number of days before users are asked to re-confirm their authentication information' is not set to '0'

This section contains recommendations for configuring Azure Security.

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3 Security

Ensure that the latest OS patches for all virtual machines are applied.

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3.1.10 Ensure that Microsoft Defender Recommendation for 'Apply system updates' status is 'Completed'

The Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (or 'MCSB') is an Azure Policy Initiative containing many security policies to evaluate resource configuration against best practice recommendations. If a policy in the MCSB is set with effect type Disabled, it is not evaluated and may prevent administrators from being informed of valuable security recommendations.

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3.1.11 Ensure that Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark policies are not set to 'Disabled'

Enable security alert emails to subscription owners.

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3.1.12 Ensure That 'All users with the following roles' is set to 'Owner'

Microsoft Defender for Cloud emails the subscription owners whenever a high-severity alert is triggered for their subscription. You should provide a security contact email address as an additional email address.

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3.1.13 Ensure 'Additional email addresses' is Configured with a Security Contact Email

Enables emailing security alerts to the subscription owner or other designated security contact.

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3.1.14 Ensure That 'Notify about alerts with the following severity' is Set to 'High'

An organization's attack surface is the collection of assets with a public network identifier or URI that an external threat actor can see or access from outside your cloud. It is the set of points on the boundary of a system, a system element, system component, or an environment where an attacker can try to enter, cause an effect on, or extract data from, that system, system element, system component, or environment. The larger the attack surface, the harder it is to protect.

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3.1.15 Ensure that Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Monitoring (EASM) is enabled

Microsoft Defender for DNS scans all network traffic exiting from within a subscription.

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3.1.16 [LEGACY] Ensure That Microsoft Defender for DNS Is Set To 'On'

Enable automatic provisioning of the monitoring agent to collect security data.

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3.1.1.1 Ensure that Auto provisioning of 'Log Analytics agent for Azure VMs' is Set to 'On'

This integration setting enables Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (formerly 'Microsoft Cloud App Security' or 'MCAS' - see additional info) to communicate with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.1.2 Ensure that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud is Selected

Turning on Microsoft Defender for Servers enables threat detection for Servers, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavior analytics in the Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.3.1 Ensure That Microsoft Defender for Servers Is Set to 'On'

Enable vulnerability assessment for machines on both Azure and hybrid (Arc enabled) machines.

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3.1.3.2 Ensure that 'Vulnerability assessment for machines' component status is set to 'On'

The Endpoint protection component enables Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly 'Advanced Threat Protection' or 'ATP' or 'WDATP' - see additional info) to communicate with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.3.3 Ensure that 'Endpoint protection' component status is set to 'On'

Using disk snapshots, the agentless scanner scans for installed software, vulnerabilities, and plain text secrets.

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3.1.3.4 Ensure that 'Agentless scanning for machines' component status is set to 'On'

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) is a feature that monitors critical system files in Windows or Linux for potential signs of attack or compromise.

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3.1.3.5 Ensure that 'File Integrity Monitoring' component status is set to 'On'

Turning on Microsoft Defender for Containers enables threat detection for Container Registries including Kubernetes, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavior analytics in the Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.4.1 Ensure That Microsoft Defender for Containers Is Set To 'On'

Enable automatic discovery and configuration scanning of the Microsoft Kubernetes clusters.

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3.1.4.2 Ensure that 'Agentless discovery for Kubernetes' component status 'On'

Enable automatic vulnerability management for images stored in ACR or running in AKS clusters.

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3.1.4.3 Ensure that 'Agentless container vulnerability assessment' component status is 'On'

Turning on Microsoft Defender for Storage enables threat detection for Storage, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavior analytics in the Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.5.1 Ensure That Microsoft Defender for Storage Is Set To 'On'

Turning on Microsoft Defender for App Service enables threat detection for App Service, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavior analytics in the Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

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3.1.6.1 Ensure That Microsoft Defender for App Services Is Set To 'On'

Microsoft Defender for Azure Cosmos DB scans all incoming network requests for threats to your Azure Cosmos DB resources.

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3.1.7.1 Ensure That Microsoft Defender for Azure Cosmos DB Is Set To 'On'

Pipelines