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Require multifactor authentication for guest access

Require guest users perform multifactor authentication when accessing your organization's resources. Some organizations might be ready to move to stronger authentication methods for their guest users. These organizations might choose to implement a policy like the one described in the article Require multifactor authentication strength for external users.

User exclusions

Conditional Access policies are powerful tools. We recommend excluding the following accounts from your policies:

  • Emergency access or break-glass accounts to prevent lockout due to policy misconfiguration. In the unlikely scenario where all administrators are locked out, your emergency access administrative account can be used to sign in and recover access.
  • Service accounts and Service principals, such as the Microsoft Entra Connect Sync Account. Service accounts are noninteractive accounts that aren't tied to any specific user. They're typically used by backend services to allow programmatic access to applications, but they're also used to sign in to systems for administrative purposes. Calls made by service principals aren't blocked by Conditional Access policies scoped to users. Use Conditional Access for workload identities to define policies that target service principals.
    • If your organization uses these accounts in scripts or code, replace them with managed identities.

Template deployment

Organizations can deploy this policy by following the steps outlined below or by using the Conditional Access templates.

Create a Conditional Access policy

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Conditional Access Administrator.
  2. Browse to Entra ID > Conditional Access > Policies.
  3. Select New policy.
  4. Give your policy a name. We recommend that organizations create a meaningful standard for the names of their policies.
  5. Under Assignments, select Users or workload identities.
    1. Under Include, select All guest and external users
    2. Under Exclude, select Users and groups and choose your organization's emergency access or break-glass accounts.
  6. Under Target resources > Resources (formerly cloud apps) > Include, select All resources (formerly 'All cloud apps').
    1. Under Exclude, select any applications that don't require multifactor authentication.
  7. Under Access controls > Grant, select Grant access, Require multifactor authentication, and select Select.
  8. Confirm your settings and set Enable policy to Report-only.
  9. Select Create to create to enable your policy.

After confirming your settings using policy impact or report-only mode, move the Enable policy toggle from Report-only to On.

Next steps

Conditional Access templates

Use report-only mode for Conditional Access to determine the results of new policy decisions.