Detect and Respond to Privilege Escalation in Microsoft Entra

A single account gains admin rights without warning. Systems shift. Risks spike. You’ve got seconds to act.

Microsoft Entra Privilege Escalation Alerts give you that window. They track changes in role assignments across Entra ID. If a standard user is granted high-level privileges—Global Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, Application Administrator—you see it instantly.

Privilege escalation is one of the fastest paths to breach. Attackers target accounts, increase access, and move laterally through your environment. Entra’s alerts cut response time. They detect elevation events from direct role assignments, group memberships, or admin consent changes to apps.

Configuring these alerts in Microsoft Entra is straightforward.

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.
2. Go to Identity Governance > Alert Policies.
3. Create a policy for “Privilege escalation” events.
4. Set conditions: roles to monitor, notification recipients, and thresholds.

Data from the audit logs supports these alerts. Every role change is logged with actor, target, and timestamp. Correlating this with Sign-in Logs exposes suspicious patterns: new role + unfamiliar IP + high-frequency requests.

Best practices with Entra Privilege Escalation Alerts:

• Monitor critical admin roles only, to reduce noise.
• Integrate alerts into your SIEM for real-time correlation.
• Automate remediation actions, such as removing the role or forcing MFA.
• Review historical escalation events monthly.

For teams running hybrid or multi-cloud environments, Entra alerts feed directly into Microsoft Sentinel or any API-supported tool. This centralizes monitoring across identity platforms.

Rapid privilege escalation detection is not optional—it’s core security. Microsoft Entra gives you the trigger; the rest is about speed and automation.

See how you can detect and respond to privilege escalation in Microsoft Entra live, in minutes, with hoop.dev.