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.

FreeReviewedSigma · High · v5

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 Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078Valid Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078Valid Accounts
Priv Esc
- T1078Valid Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078Valid Accounts
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

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Azure Entra PIM Alerts: Too Many Global Administrators Assigned to Tenant

Pivot detection · T1078 · 9 related

Changelog

v5
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v4
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v3
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v2
Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
v1
No 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.

azure-pim-alert-too-many-global-administrator-accounts-assigned-to-tenant-7bbc309f

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

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