The requirement states that server administrators must request approval before establishing a Remote Desktop connection to an Azure virtual machine, and that once approved, the connection must be established within a defined two-hour window. This request-approve-then-time-limited-access pattern for a specific management port on an Azure VM is precisely what just-in-time (JIT) VM access, a Microsoft Defender for Cloud capability, provides: it keeps the RDP/SSH management ports closed by default in the network security group, requires an explicit access request, and, once approved, opens the port only for a specified time window and only from the requester ' s source IP. Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management provides time-bound, approval-based elevation for Microsoft Entra and Azure RBAC roles, not for opening network ports to a VM, so it does not by itself control Remote Desktop network access. The Remote Desktop extension for Azure Cloud Services is a legacy classic-deployment feature unrelated to this scenario. Azure Bastion provides browser-based RDP/SSH without exposing public IPs but does not implement an approval workflow with a bounded connection window. JIT VM access is therefore the correct, purpose-built solution.
Contribute your Thoughts:
Chosen Answer:
This is a voting comment (?). You can switch to a simple comment. It is better to Upvote an existing comment if you don't have anything to add.
Submit