What’s the Best Way to Secure a Dedicated Global Administrator Account?

Treat Global Administrator as an emergency-level account rather than something used for routine work. Use a separate admin identity from a compliant, MFA-protected device, and keep offline emergency credentials and multiple security keys secured in separate locations. The exact setup depends on your organization’s risk tolerance, but daily administration should use lower-privilege roles whenever possible.

Require both phishing-resistant MFA and a device restriction. A device filter based on the device’s join state can be more dependable than relying only on Intune compliance, since compliance signals can occasionally be delayed or incorrect. Keep your break-glass accounts outside these policies so they remain usable during an outage.

Use a dedicated privileged access workstation and require phishing-resistant MFA, such as a FIDO2 security key or passkey. A separate browser profile is a reasonable way to keep the privileged and everyday sessions isolated.

Put the Global Administrator role behind Privileged Identity Management. The account should normally have no active role, and activation should require MFA, approval or justification where appropriate, and a short expiration time. That also gives you a clear audit trail for every elevation.