Guest User Access: A High-Level Checklist

The Guest User access dilemma in Entra is real. Balancing collaboration and security without distracting productivity is a challenge, but that’s something you can’t put on the back burner, because it can be the “Silent Insider Threat” you’re ignoring.

🚩If you block Guest access completely, that can possibly degrade end user productivity. So how to balance collaboration and security?

As you may already know Guest Access Settings are in many places and there can be a chance that you will miss something. I made a high-level checklist that you can check today in your tenant to verify and plan for the Guest User Access Security Posture.

A few things you can check today in your Entra tenant to understand the Guest user access security posture.

✅Start from a simple filter in Entra ID to see how many Guests accounts you have in the tenant.

✅Look for Conditional Access Policies that covers All guests and external users. If you don’t have any, plan for the policies.

✅Notice who can send Guest user invites. Is that everyone? or a selected set of users?

✅Lock it down to the relevant users or RBAC it to Guest Inviter role.

✅Access reviews to be carried out for Guest users who has been added on invitation.

✅Lock it down to the tenant level so Guests can be added from the approved tenants only.

✅For any ad hoc invites, add a sponsor for the Guest account properties (vendors, contractors, once off Guest Access scenarios etc.)

✅Sponsors can be approvers in Connected Organizations for Entitlement Packages.

✅For the Guest accounts whose UserType is Member (if changed manually or via cross-tenant mapping) – Notice they will have same access as a normal in your tenant.

✅Control Access via Entitlement Packages “For users not in your directory”. You can include a reason to access, what resources they need, approval levels, expiry on access, groups they should be on etc.

✅Configure what will happen to the guest user once the access package expires (block, remove etc)

✅If you are using B2B Collaboration settings and Cross-tenant synchronization, make sure only the scoped users will have inbound access to your tenant and setup what to trust (home tenant CA Policies and managed device etc.) and access to apps for those users.

✅Cross-tenant synchronization will replicate the user state in your tenant when the guest is disabled or deleted from the home tenant.

✅Utilise a pre-built workbook in Entra such as “Cross-Tenant access activity” to monitor behavior.

✅B2B Direct connect – what Teams Shared Channels are your Guests a part of? Are you honoring their home tenant MFA?

✅Be sure to check SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business settings for Sharing and External user access.

Hope these high-level points will be helpful when planning/ re-visiting your Guest User Access scenarios.