Temporary access pass is enabled

Maester checks this too

EIDSCA.AT01 (Authentication Method - Temporary Access Pass - State.) checks the same setting. Running both reports it twice.

Overview

Without Temporary Access Pass (TAP) enabled, organizations face significant challenges in securely bootstrapping user credentials, creating a vulnerability where users rely on weaker authentication mechanisms during their initial setup. When users cannot register phishing-resistant credentials like FIDO2 security keys or Windows Hello for Business due to lack of existing strong authentication methods, they remain exposed to credential-based attacks including phishing, password spray, or similar attacks. Threat actors can exploit this registration gap by targeting users during their most vulnerable state, when they have limited authentication options available and must rely on traditional username + password combinations. This exposure enables threat actors to compromise user accounts during the critical bootstrapping phase, allowing them to intercept or manipulate the registration process for stronger authentication methods, ultimately gaining persistent access to organizational resources and potentially escalating privileges before security controls are fully established.

Enable TAP and use it with security info registration to secure this potential gap in your defenses.

Remediation

• Learn how to enable Temporary Access Pass in the Authentication methods policy
• Learn how to update authentication strength policies to include Temporary Access Pass
• Learn how to create a Conditional Access policy for security info registration with authentication strength enforcement

Run it

The check runs as part of the whole assessment, with the ZeroTrustAssessment module installed:

Install-Module ZeroTrustAssessment -Scope CurrentUser
Connect-Maester
Invoke-Maester -Pack ZTA -SkipBuiltIn

Leave out -SkipBuiltIn to run Maester’s own checks in the same run.

About this check

Severity	Low
Effort to fix	Low
Impact on users	Low
Pillar	Identity
Category	Access control
Product	Entra ID
Feature	Authentication methods
Area	Authentication
Licence	P1
Tenant	Workforce, External

Product, feature, area and ATT&CK are Maester’s: the assessment does not record them, so Maester keeps them in the pack’s taxonomy.json.

A Microsoft check, part of the Zero Trust Assessment pack. Text from ZeroTrustAssessment 3.1.0, © Microsoft, MIT licence.