CISA.MS.AAD.7.3: Privileged users SHALL be provisioned cloud-only accounts separate from an on-premises directory or other federated identity providers.

ID	CISA.MS.AAD.7.3
Severity	High
Suite	CISA SCuBA baselines
Product	Entra ID
Feature	Roles and administrators
Security area	Privileged access
Resource type	User
User impact of fixing	Low
Effort to fix	Medium
Benchmark	CISA SCuBA Secure Configuration Baselines for Microsoft 365 ScubaGear main, 2026-10-11, MS.AAD.7.3 (SHALL)
Framework controls	cisa-scuba:MS.AAD.7.3 nist-800-53-r5:AC-6(5) Least Privilege | Privileged Accounts
MITRE ATT&CK	T1556.007, T1078.002, T1078.004
Reads from	Microsoft Graph

What this checks and how to fix it

Privileged users SHALL be provisioned cloud-only accounts separate from an on-premises directory or other federated identity providers.

Rationale: Many privileged administrative users do not need unfettered access to the tenant to perform their duties. By assigning them to roles based on least privilege, the risks associated with having their accounts compromised are reduced.

Remediation action:

1. Perform the steps below for each highly privileged role.
2. Review the users listed that have an OnPremisesImmutableId and have OnPremisesSyncEnabled set.
3. Create a cloud only user account for that individual and remove their hybrid identity from privileged roles.

Related links

• Entra admin center - Roles and administrators | All roles
• CISA 7.3 Highly Privileged User Access - MS.AAD.7.3v1
• CISA ScubaGear Rego Reference

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Mito check, based on CISA ScubaGear. Author: soulemike; contributors: thomas-s-schmidt, merill, mrdos010. Open-source licences.