MFA Review Questionnaire Template: Key Questions for Assessing Multi-Factor Authentication

This MFA review questionnaire template equips you to evaluate how well multi-factor authentication protects your organization. Use it to structure interviews, gather evidence, and prioritize improvements across effectiveness, security gaps, user behavior, authentication methods, measurable outcomes, policies, and incident handling.

As you apply the template, document decisions and capture User Authentication Feedback. Fold findings into your Regulatory Compliance Assessment, strengthen Authentication Failure Response plans, and refine MFA Incident Recovery procedures.

Assess MFA Effectiveness

Start by confirming whether MFA materially reduces account takeover risk without imposing excessive friction. Focus on coverage, consistency, and demonstrable security outcomes across all identities and access paths.

Key questions to ask

• Scope: Which user populations (workforce, partners, customers, admins, service accounts) are in scope for MFA? Which are out of scope, and why?
• Coverage: What percentage of privileged, remote, and high-risk access paths require MFA by policy and in practice?
• Outcomes: How has the rate of account takeover, credential stuffing, or unauthorized access changed since MFA deployment?
• Consistency: Is MFA enforced at initial login, reauthentication, and step-up events for sensitive actions?
• Resilience: How does MFA perform during outages of the identity provider, push service, or network constraints?
• Experience: What are typical time-to-authenticate and abandonment rates? Where do users struggle most?

Evidence to collect

• Enrollment and enforcement reports from your identity provider.
• Authentication logs demonstrating success, challenge, and failure outcomes.
• Incident records linking MFA to prevented or successful intrusions.

Identify Security Gaps

Probe how attackers could bypass or degrade MFA. Emphasize MFA Bypass Detection, misconfiguration hunting, and high-value exceptions such as break-glass accounts and legacy protocols.

Key questions to ask

• Bypass paths: Which flows allow password-only access (legacy IMAP/POP/SMTP, older VPNs, API tokens, SSH keys)? How are these controlled?
• Recovery risks: How are account recovery, device loss, and phone number changes verified to prevent social engineering?
• Push fatigue: What protections exist against prompt bombing and consent spamming?
• Session risk: Are token lifetimes, refresh policies, and session fixation protections set appropriately?
• Detection: What signals trigger MFA Bypass Detection (impossible travel, new device, unusual ASN, TOR, velocity anomalies)?
• Third-party risks: How are OAuth consent, SSO integrations, and delegated admin apps reviewed and approved?

Evidence to collect

• Configuration baselines for authentication policies, conditional access, and sign-in risk.
• Reports listing active exceptions, legacy protocol usage, and break-glass accounts.
• Alert rules and past detections indicating bypass attempts and responses.

Evaluate User Compliance

Effectiveness depends on adoption and correct daily use. Measure enrollment, usage, and behavior, and incorporate structured User Authentication Feedback to refine policies and training.

Key questions to ask

• Adoption: What percentage of target users are enrolled in MFA, by group and geography? Who is overdue?
• Consistency: How often do users skip, defer, or fail MFA challenges? What are the top reasons?
• Training: How and when do users learn secure MFA habits (e.g., verifying push details, avoiding approval spam)?
• Support: What are the top MFA support drivers (device changes, time drift, roaming)? How quickly are they resolved?
• Feedback: How is User Authentication Feedback gathered and actioned to reduce friction without weakening security?

Metrics to review

• Enrollment completion rate and time-to-enroll by cohort.
• Challenge success rate, first-time success rate, and abandonment rate.
• Help desk ticket volume and mean time to resolution related to MFA.

Analyze Authentication Methods

Evaluate the portfolio of factors you support, their risk profiles, and how they’re combined. Favor phishing-resistant options while maintaining practical fallbacks and strong Secure Token Management.

Key questions to ask

• Methods in use: Which are enabled and preferred (FIDO2/WebAuthn passkeys, security keys, platform biometrics, TOTP apps, push, smart cards, SMS/voice OTP)?
• Risk posture: Where are weaker factors (SMS/voice) still used, and what is the plan to phase down or constrain them?
• Combinations: When is step-up required (e.g., wire approvals, elevated privileges, sensitive data export)?
• Fallbacks: How are recovery codes, help desk resets, and identity proofing secured against social engineering?
• Device trust: How are device binding, attestation, or key protection verified for passkeys and security keys?

Secure Token Management

• Lifecycle: How are tokens and authenticators provisioned, rotated, revoked, and destroyed?
• Inventory: Can you enumerate all registered authenticators per user and detect anomalies (sudden additions, stale devices)?
• Escrow: Are recovery codes generated, stored securely, and periodically refreshed?

Measure Security Metrics

Define quantitative Access Control Metrics that reveal security posture and user impact. Track them over time, segment by application and population, and tie goals to risk reduction.

Core metrics and formulas

• MFA coverage = users with enforced MFA ÷ total target users.
• High-risk coverage = privileged or remote-access identities with enforced MFA ÷ total in class.
• Authentication failure rate = failed challenges ÷ total challenges.
• Bypass rate = successful sign-ins that circumvent MFA ÷ total sign-ins; target should approach zero.
• Time-to-authenticate (median and p95) by method and application.
• Account takeover rate per 10,000 users before vs. after MFA.
• Authentication Failure Response: mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR) to suspicious MFA activity.
• MFA Incident Recovery: mean time to restore secure access after authenticator loss or compromise.

Dashboards and thresholds

• Set red/yellow/green bands for failure, bypass, and coverage; trigger reviews when thresholds are breached.
• Correlate sign-in risk signals with challenge outcomes to validate adaptive policies.
• Publish trend lines and quarterly targets to drive continuous improvement.

Review Compliance and Policies

Validate that MFA policies align with regulatory and contractual obligations. Perform a documented Regulatory Compliance Assessment and ensure enforcement matches written policy.

Key questions to ask

• Standards mapping: Which requirements apply (e.g., access control, authentication assurance, privileged access)? Where is MFA explicitly mandated?
• Policy scope: Are remote access, admin actions, third-party access, and sensitive transactions covered without exception?
• Exceptions: How are break-glass, service accounts, and legacy app exemptions approved, time-boxed, and monitored?
• Records: Are enrollment, challenges, and overrides logged and retained per policy?
• Privacy: How is biometric or device data handled with minimal collection and clear retention limits?

Evidence to collect

• Policy documents, risk assessments, and exception registers.
• Audit reports demonstrating control operation and sampling results.
• Training materials and acknowledgment records for MFA-related policies.

Implement Incident Handling Procedures

Prepare clear playbooks for suspicious sign-in spikes, authenticator compromise, and large-scale provider issues. Tie detections to decisive Authentication Failure Response and end-to-end MFA Incident Recovery.

Playbook essentials

• Detection: Alerts for excessive failures, approval spamming, new-country logins, or sudden factor re-registrations.
• Containment: Temporarily lock accounts or require step-up; revoke active sessions and refresh tokens organization-wide if needed.
• Eradication: Reset credentials, re-issue authenticators, and remove rogue devices or app registrations.
• Recovery: Verify user identity, re-enroll with stronger factors, and restore access with least privilege.
• Lessons learned: Update policies, detections, and user guidance; track root cause and remediation due dates.

RACI and communication

• Define owners for decision making, execution, and approvals across security, identity, IT operations, and help desk.
• Pre-draft internal comms for users and execs; maintain vendor escalation paths for outages or abuse.

Conclusion

Use this MFA Review Questionnaire Template to drive evidence-based improvements. Prioritize closing bypass paths, improving enrollment and experience, adopting phishing-resistant methods, and tightening Secure Token Management. Measure what matters, align with policy, and harden your Authentication Failure Response and recovery playbooks.

FAQs

What are the key questions in an MFA review questionnaire?

Focus on scope and coverage, enforcement consistency, bypass paths, recovery risks, user adoption and friction, strength of factor types, quality of Secure Token Management, effectiveness metrics, policy alignment, and incident handling readiness. Ask for concrete evidence—reports, logs, exceptions, and past incident records—to validate each answer.

How can MFA effectiveness be measured?

Track coverage across high-risk access, authentication failure and bypass rates, median and p95 time-to-authenticate, changes in account takeover incidents, and support burden trends. Include Access Control Metrics for mean time to detect and respond to suspicious activity and mean time to recover from authenticator loss or compromise.

What are common methods of multi-factor authentication?

Common methods include FIDO2/WebAuthn passkeys and security keys, platform biometrics, authenticator apps generating TOTP codes, push approvals with contextual details, smart cards, and SMS or voice OTP (appropriate mainly as constrained fallbacks). Favor phishing-resistant options where possible and pair weaker factors with tighter policies.

How should incidents involving MFA failures be handled?

Trigger your Authentication Failure Response on suspicious patterns, contain by enforcing step-up or temporarily locking accounts, revoke tokens and sessions, re-verify identity, and re-issue stronger authenticators. Complete MFA Incident Recovery by restoring least-privilege access, documenting root cause, updating detections, and closing identified gaps.