Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is a service in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) that enables you to manage, control, and monitor access to important resources in your organization. These resources include resources in Azure AD, Azure, and other Microsoft Online Services such as Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Intune. The following video introduces you to important PIM concepts and features.
Reasons to use
Organizations want to minimize the number of people who have access to secure information or resources, because that reduces the chance of a malicious actor getting that access, or an authorized user inadvertently impacting a sensitive resource. However, users still need to carry out privileged operations in Azure AD, Azure, Microsoft 365, or SaaS apps. Organizations can give users just-in-time privileged access to Azure resources and Azure AD. There is a need for oversight for what those users are doing with their administrator privileges.
What does it do?
Privileged Identity Management provides time-based and approval-based role activation to mitigate the risks of excessive, unnecessary, or misused access permissions on resources that you care about. Here are some of the key features of Privileged Identity Management:
Provide just-in-time privileged access to Azure AD and Azure resources
Assign time-bound access to resources using start and end dates
Require approval to activate privileged roles
Enforce multi-factor authentication to activate any role
Use justification to understand why users activate
Get notifications when privileged roles are activated
Conduct access reviews to ensure users still need roles
Download audit history for internal or external audit
What can I do with it?
Once you set up Privileged Identity Management, you'll see Tasks, Manage, and Activity options in the left navigation menu. As an administrator, you'll choose between options such as managing Azure AD roles, managing Azure resource roles, or privileged access groups. When you choose what you want to manage, you see the appropriate set of options for that option.
Scenarios
Privileged Identity Management supports the following scenarios:
Privileged Role administrator permissions
Enable approval for specific roles
Specify approver users or groups to approve requests
View request and approval history for all privileged roles
Approver permissions
View pending approvals (requests)
Approve or reject requests for role elevation (single and bulk)
Provide justification for my approval or rejection
Eligible role user permissions
Request activation of a role that requires approval
View the status of your request to activate
Complete your task in Azure AD if activation was approved
License requirements
This feature requires an Azure AD Premium P2 license.