Azure Entra PIM Alerts: Too Many Global Administrators Assigned to Tenant
Alerts when Azure PIM reports an overabundance of Global Administrator role assignments in a tenant.
- Product
- azure
- Service
- pim
- Author
- Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Gloria Lee, '@gleeiamglo' (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
- Published
- 2023-09-14
- Updated
- 2026-07-31
ATT&CK techniques
Initial Access → Defense EvasionRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
What it detects
This rule flags an Azure Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) alert when a tenant has too many accounts assigned to the Global Administrator role. Attackers often aim to broaden privileged access to reduce the chance that one account is noticed or to maintain persistence across compromised accounts. The detection relies on PIM event telemetry indicating the specific riskEventType of a “too many global admins assigned” tenant alert.
Reporting behind it
- learn.microsoft.comhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/id-governance/privileged-identity-management/pim-how-to-configure-security-alerts#there-are-too-many-global-administrators
- github.comhttps://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/cloud/azure/privileged_identity_management/azure_pim_too_many_global_admins.yml
Changelog
v5- v5Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
- v4Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
- v3Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
- v2Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
- v1No changelog recorded for this version.2026-07-30
Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.
title: "Azure Entra PIM Alerts: Too Many Global Administrators Assigned to Tenant"
id: bef6c8be-bdf2-4ed3-8ae2-f4c7b713b2f1
status: test
description: This rule flags an Azure Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) alert when a tenant has too many accounts assigned to the Global Administrator role. Attackers often aim to broaden privileged access to reduce the chance that one account is noticed or to maintain persistence across compromised accounts. The detection relies on PIM event telemetry indicating the specific riskEventType of a “too many global admins assigned” tenant alert.
references:
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/id-governance/privileged-identity-management/pim-how-to-configure-security-alerts#there-are-too-many-global-administrators
- https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/cloud/azure/privileged_identity_management/azure_pim_too_many_global_admins.yml
author: Mark Morowczynski '@markmorow', Gloria Lee, '@gleeiamglo', Huntrule Team
date: 2023-09-14
tags:
- attack.initial-access
- attack.stealth
- attack.t1078
- attack.persistence
- attack.privilege-escalation
logsource:
product: azure
service: pim
detection:
selection:
riskEventType: tooManyGlobalAdminsAssignedToTenantAlertIncident
condition: selection
falsepositives:
- Investigate if threshold setting in PIM is too low.
level: high
license: DRL-1.1
related:
- id: 7bbc309f-e2b1-4eb1-8369-131a367d67d3
type: derived