Azure Subscription Management Certificate

Detects Azure subscription management certificate patterns. This pattern is based on a Microsoft Purview built-in sensitive information type. Users already running Purview may prefer to enable the built-in SIT directly, or use this version as a starting point for customisation.

Type

regex

Engine

universal

Confidence

high

Confidence justification

High confidence: long Base64-encoded certificate value with management certificate context keywords provides strong structural constraint. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Partial

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth)

Frameworks

CIS Controls, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2

Data categories

credentials, security

Scope

specific

Risk rating

10

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)(?:ManagementCertificate|management[._-]?cert)\s*=\s*"?[A-Za-z0-9+/\s]{100,}={0,2}"?

Corroborative evidence keywords

management certificate, subscription, Azure, ManagementCertificate, publishsettings, certificate, subscription management, service management, api key, api_key, apikey, access key, access token, auth token, authorization, bearer, conn str, connection string, connectionstring, cookie (+45 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• ManagementCertificate="AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" — Management certificate in publish settings
• management_cert="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuv==" — Management certificate with mixed characters
• ManagementCertificate="00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000" — Management certificate placeholder

Should not match

• ManagementCertificate="" — Empty certificate value
• ManagementCertificate="short" — Value too short to be a certificate
• template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

• Azure documentation describing management certificate format with example values. Mitigation: Check for common placeholder patterns and documentation context.
• Expired management certificates that no longer grant access. Mitigation: Flag for review regardless since the certificate format reveals subscription details.

References

• Azure subscription management certificate entity definition - Microsoft Learn