Internet access forwarding profile is enabled

Overview

When the Internet Access forwarding profile isn’t enabled, users can access internet resources without routing traffic through the Secure Web Gateway. This gap allows threat actors to bypass security controls that block threats, malicious content, and unsafe destinations.

Without this protection:

• Organizations lose visibility into traffic patterns. They can’t detect data exfiltration, connections to malicious domains, or unauthorized external access.
• Threat actors can deliver malware, establish command and control connections, or exfiltrate data through unmonitored channels.
• Threat actors can use compromised credentials or social engineering to gain initial access, download tools, establish persistence, or communicate with external infrastructure.
• Threat actors can use compromised accounts to blend with typical user behavior and access external resources without triggering security alerts based on user context, device compliance, or location.

Remediation

• Enable the Internet Access forwarding profile to route traffic through the Secure Web Gateway. For more information, see How to manage the Internet Access traffic forwarding profile.
• Assign users and groups to the Internet Access profile to limit traffic forwarding to specific users. For more information, see Global Secure Access traffic forwarding profiles.

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	High
Effort to fix	Low
Impact on users	Medium
Pillar	Network
Category	Global Secure Access
Product	Entra ID
Feature	Global Secure Access
Area	Access control
ATT&CK	T1071.001 Web Protocols, T1567 Exfiltration Over Web Service, T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer
Licence	Entra_Premium_Internet_Access, Entra_Premium_Global_Secure_Access
Tenant	Workforce

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.