Forum Discussion
Idle session timeout Conditional access policy for unmanaged devices
To use that you need to set the idle timeout in the 365 admin center first. Go to Settings > Org settings > Security Privacy tab > Idle session timeout.
This is what will be used when you set the conditional access policy.
This is one of the CIS Microsoft 365 benchmarks if you want to see more about the configuration: https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/microsoft_365
I wanted to set this policy for unmanaged devices only and as per the link which I shared in the question about unmanaged devices only and what is the timeout for it and how we can change or customize it?
- The below configuration is taken from the CIS 365 Benchmark recommendation: "1.7 (L1) Ensure 'Idle session timeout' is set to '1 hour (or less)' for unmanaged devices". You can grab a free copy of the benchmarks with more details on this recommendation at: https://www.cisecurity.org/benchmark/microsoft_365.
Step 1 - configure Idle session timeout:
1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center https://admin.microsoft.com/.
2. Click to expand Settings Select Org settings.
3. Click Security & Privacy tab.
4. Select Idle session timeout.
5. Check the box Turn on to set the period of inactivity for users to be
signed off of Microsoft 365 web apps
6. Set a value of 1 hour.
7. Click save.
Step 2 - Ensure the Conditional Access policy is in place:
1. Navigate to Microsoft Entra admin center https://entra.microsoft.com/
2. Expand Azure Active Directory > Protect & secure > Conditional Access
3. Click New policy and give the policy a name.
4. Select Users > All users.
5. Select Cloud apps or actions > Select apps and select Office 365
6. Select Conditions > Client apps > Yes check only Browser unchecking all other
boxes.
7. Select Sessions and check Use app enforced restrictions.
8. Set Enable policy to On and click Create.
NOTE: To ensure that idle timeouts affect only unmanaged devices, both steps must be
completed
Hope that helps,
Eric- I am very curious if anyone can provide clarification here. As far as I can see now, this CA rule ensures that on unmanaged workstations the session time out works. However, this setting will also always affect the session time out on managed workstations. I suspect the Microsoft documentation is incorrect here.
- I am also curious how this would work. There is no setting in CA according to documentation for only unmanaged devices, so it would be odd if the global setting only applies to unmanaged devices when the CA rule exists, not scoped to any form of clients. This is different from app enforced restrictions for download/print when clients are managed/joined, because this global setting only takes effect when a CA rule exists, not otherwise.
Hi,
I can see this in below given link about Idle session timeout but it seems its for non-company or shared devices but it does not clear whether its going to target unmanaged devices as well or what and seems confusing here.
See below snap
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/admin/manage/idle-session-timeout-web-apps?view=o365-worldwide&WT.mc_id=365AdminCSH_inproduct
How we are going to target unmanaged devices in this created conditional access policy by creating filter under platform or what because if we apply this policy to all the users then how its going to determine which device is this policy for? As we did not add any filter or targeted such unmanaged devices?
Also if we wanted to increase the idle session timeout for managed devices lets say 3 hours and unmanaged devices 1 hour then how we are going to do this with both policies in M365 admin and Conditional access policy?
