NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 · Identification and Authentication
IA-2(1) on AWS
Privileged access without multifactor authentication — a published SQL (Athena) + Lambda query you can run against Amazon Athena over the IAM credential report, with the evidence it needs, the settings you decide, and what a result does and does not establish.
Why this matters
An administrator who can sign in with a password alone
A second step at sign-in — a code from a phone, a hardware key, a fingerprint — is the single most effective defence against stolen passwords, and it matters most for the accounts that can change everything. Organizations frequently enable it broadly but leave gaps: an emergency account, a contractor, a service that was set up before the policy existed. The gap is invisible until someone finds it.
Why this check earns its place. It looks specifically at the accounts where a stolen password does the most damage, rather than reporting a general adoption percentage that hides exactly the wrong exceptions.
- What it reads
- The organization's list of who holds administrative roles, compared against its record of who has a second sign-in step enrolled.
- What it reports
- Accounts with administrative powers that can still be accessed with a password and nothing else.
See related public disclosures on the Signals page →
What this finds
Privileged identity with no MFA enrolled, or observed authenticating with a single factor.
The requirement
The organization must implement multifactor authentication for access to privileged accounts.
NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 — IA-2(1).
NIST states the requirement without qualification for privileged accounts. What counts as privileged, which methods satisfy the requirement, and how exceptions are recorded remain organization-defined.
How this maps to the CISA performance goals
The Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals are a voluntary baseline published by CISA — the U.S. federal agency for critical-infrastructure cybersecurity — written for organizations too small to employ security staff. This control speaks to:
- 3.F — Implement multifactor authentication (MFA)
The goal is multifactor authentication; the pack finds privileged access without it.
See the full coverage map, including the goals no query can answer →
Evidence this query needs
Privileged role register privileged_role_register.csv
Defines which roles your organisation treats as privileged, who owns each one, and how often it must be reviewed. Cloud platforms know which roles exist; only you know which ones matter and who is accountable for them.
Minimum fields: role_name, platform, privilege_classification
Three fields make the staleness and MFA checks work. The ownership fields are what make AC-6(7) answerable at all — without them that check has nothing to test against.
The query
Published as ia-2-1-privileged-mfa.aws.sql. Reads iam_credential_report, privileged_role_register (supplied). Requires: iam:GenerateCredentialReport; iam:GetCredentialReport; athena:StartQueryExecution.
Before this returns anything,
iam_credential_report has to be reaching Amazon Athena over the IAM credential report, and privileged_role_register (supplied) has to be landed there. If not, the query reports nothing found — which looks
exactly like nothing wrong. What has to be switched on first →
-- IA-2(1) -- privileged IAM users with console access and no MFA
SELECT
c.user_name, c.arn, r.role_name, r.privilege_classification,
c.password_enabled, c.mfa_active, c.password_last_used,
'AWS IAM' AS source_system
FROM iam_credential_report c
JOIN privileged_role_register r
ON r.platform = 'aws'
AND lower(r.role_name) = lower(c.user_name)
WHERE c.password_enabled = true
AND c.mfa_active = false
AND coalesce(r.mfa_required, true) = true
ORDER BY c.password_last_used DESC;Open this pack on AWS to adjust the settings and download it →
The interactive version opens on AWS — the platform on this page — even if your environment profile does not list it.
Settings you decide
NIST states the objective and leaves these to your organization. The interactive version of this pack applies them to the query for you.
- Limit to specific accounts (optional)
- Paste IAM user names, one per line.
Running it continuously
EventBridge Scheduler → Lambda → Security Hub
Schedule: EventBridge Scheduler, rate(6 hours)
Compute: Lambda (Python 3.12), 120s timeout
Step 1: Generate and retrieve the credential report
Step 2: Filter: privileged AND console-enabled AND no MFA
Step 3: BatchImportFindings -> Security Hub
Severity label: CRITICAL
RelatedRequirements: NIST.800-53.r5 IA-2(1)
Idempotency: Id = sha256(user_arn + "no-mfa")Filtering on password_enabled keeps this focused on console access. Programmatic-only identities are a separate control question and would add noise without changing console risk.
What a result does not prove
Absence of MFA in one data source does not establish that no second factor exists. Registration state, enforcement policy, and observed behaviour are three different things and should be reconciled.
Validation status for this platform: Not tenant-validated. Structure, query generation, and preflight are covered by the project's automated test suites. This pack has not been executed against a live tenant, account, or index. Validate it in a non-production scope before relying on any result.
Before you act on a result
- Is there a documented, current exception with a compensating control?
- Does the account authenticate through a legacy protocol or excluded application?
- Is MFA registered but not enforced by conditional access for this account?
- Can the account be brought into scope now, or does a dependency block it?
Common questions
- How do I check for privileged access without multifactor authentication in AWS?
- Run the published SQL (Athena) + Lambda query on this page against Amazon Athena over the IAM credential report. It reads iam_credential_report, privileged_role_register (supplied) and reports: Privileged identity with no MFA enrolled, or observed authenticating with a single factor.
- What permissions are needed to run this AWS query?
- iam:GenerateCredentialReport; iam:GetCredentialReport; athena:StartQueryExecution.
- What evidence does IA-2(1) need that AWS cannot produce?
- Privileged role register (privileged_role_register.csv). Defines which roles your organisation treats as privileged, who owns each one, and how often it must be reviewed. Cloud platforms know which roles exist; only you know which ones matter and who is accountable for them. At minimum it must carry: role_name, platform, privilege_classification.
- Does a result from this query mean the control has failed?
- Absence of MFA in one data source does not establish that no second factor exists. Registration state, enforcement policy, and observed behaviour are three different things and should be reconciled.
Terms used on this page
- NIST SP 800-53the U.S. federal catalogue of security requirements
- The catalogue of security and privacy requirements published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. federal agency. U.S. government systems are measured against it, and many private organizations adopt it voluntarily. Each requirement has an identifier such as AC-2. Official source →
- CISACybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- The U.S. federal agency responsible for national critical-infrastructure cybersecurity. Its publications are works of the U.S. government and are free to use. Official source →
- CPGCross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals
- A voluntary baseline of security practices published by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, written specifically for organizations too small to employ security staff. It is a short, plainly written starting list rather than a full standard. Official source →
- MFAmultifactor authentication
- Requiring a second step at sign-in beyond the password — a code from a phone, a hardware key, a fingerprint. It is the single most effective protection against a stolen password.
- not tenant-validatednever executed against real data
- The check has passed the project's automated tests for structure and syntax, but has never been run against real data anywhere. Test it in a safe scope before relying on any result.