Yandex Cloud
Search
Contact UsTry it for free
  • Customer Stories
  • Documentation
  • Blog
  • All Services
  • System Status
  • Marketplace
    • Featured
    • Infrastructure & Network
    • Data Platform
    • AI for business
    • Security
    • DevOps tools
    • Serverless
    • Monitoring & Resources
  • All Solutions
    • By industry
    • By use case
    • Economics and Pricing
    • Security
    • Technical Support
    • Start testing with double trial credits
    • Cloud credits to scale your IT product
    • Gateway to Russia
    • Cloud for Startups
    • Center for Technologies and Society
    • Yandex Cloud Partner program
    • Price calculator
    • Pricing plans
  • Customer Stories
  • Documentation
  • Blog
© 2026 Direct Cursus Technology L.L.C.
Yandex Identity Hub
    • All guides
    • Subscribing a user to notifications
      • Adding an SSH key
      • Deleting an SSH key
      • Enabling refresh tokens
      • Enabling the two-factor authentication requirement for Yandex accounts
        • Creating an MFA policy
        • Applying an MFA policy to users
        • Updating an MFA policy
        • Activating or deactivating an MFA policy
        • Deleting an MFA policy
        • Removing an MFA factor and resetting the verification date
    • Syncing users and groups with Active Directory
    • Billing management in Identity Hub
  • Access management
  • Pricing policy
  • Terraform reference
  • Audit Trails events
  • Release notes
  • Yandex Identity Hub Sync Agent release notes
  1. Step-by-step guides
  2. Authentication
  3. Managing MFA
  4. Applying an MFA policy to users

Applying an MFA policy to users

Written by
Yandex Cloud
Updated at March 5, 2026

For an MFA policy to apply to user accounts, you need to explicitly add the relevant users or the groups they are members of to the policy's target groups.

Cloud Center UI
CLI
Terraform
API
  1. Log in to Yandex Identity Hub.

  2. In the left-hand panel, select Security settings.

  3. Navigate to the MFA policies tab and select the policy you need from the list. In the window that opens:

    1. Navigate to the Users and groups tab.

    2. To add a new user or group to the policy's target groups:

      1. Click Add users.
      2. In the window that opens, select the required user or user group.
      3. Click Add.
    3. To delete a user or group from the policy:

      1. In the list of users and groups, click and select Delete next to the user or user group.
      2. Confirm the deletion.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI installed yet, install and initialize it.

By default, the CLI uses the folder specified when creating the profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also set a different folder for any specific command using the --folder-name or --folder-id options.

  1. View a list of users or groups subject to the MFA policy:

    yc organization-manager mfa-enforcement list-audience \
      --id <policy_ID>
    
  2. See the description of the CLI command for changing the list of users or groups subject to the MFA policy:

    yc organization-manager mfa-enforcement update-audience --help
    
  3. To add users or groups to the MFA policy, or to remove them from it, run this command:

    yc organization-manager mfa-enforcement update-audience \
      --id <policy_ID> \
      --audience-delta subject-id=<subject_ID>,action=<action>
    

    Where:

    • --audience-delta: Parameter to edit the list of users/groups in the policy:
      • subject-id: User or group ID.
      • action: Action, action-add to add, action-remove to delete.

    You can specify multiple --audience-delta parameters to edit more than one object at the same time.

With Terraform, you can quickly create a cloud infrastructure in Yandex Cloud and manage it using configuration files. These files store the infrastructure description written in HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). If you change the configuration files, Terraform automatically detects which part of your configuration is already deployed, and what should be added or removed.

Terraform is distributed under the Business Source License. The Yandex Cloud provider for Terraform is distributed under the MPL-2.0 license.

For more information about the provider resources, see the relevant documentation on the Terraform website or its mirror.

If you do not have Terraform yet, install it and configure the Yandex Cloud provider.

  1. To add a user or group to an MFA policy, describe the yandex_organizationmanager_mfa_enforcement_audience resource parameters in the configuration file:

    resource "yandex_organizationmanager_mfa_enforcement_audience" "example_mfa_audience" {
      mfa_enforcement_id = "<MFA_policy_ID>"
      subject_id         = "<user_or_group_ID>"
    }
    

    Where:

    • mfa_enforcement_id: ID of the MFA policy to which you want to add a user or group. This is a required parameter.
    • subject-id: ID of the user or group you need to add to the MFA policy. This is a required parameter.

    To add multiple users or groups, create a separate yandex_organizationmanager_mfa_enforcement_audience resource for each one.

    For more information about yandex_organizationmanager_mfa_enforcement_audience properties, see this provider guide.

  2. Create the resources:

    1. In the terminal, go to the directory where you edited the configuration file.

    2. Make sure the configuration file is correct using this command:

      terraform validate
      

      If the configuration is correct, you will get this message:

      Success! The configuration is valid.
      
    3. Run this command:

      terraform plan
      

      You will see a detailed list of resources. No changes will be made at this step. If the configuration contains any errors, Terraform will show them.

    4. Apply the changes:

      terraform apply
      
    5. Type yes and press Enter to confirm the changes.

    Terraform will create all the required resources. You can make sure the users were added to the MFA policy using the Cloud Center UI or this CLI command:

    yc organization-manager mfa-enforcement list-audience --id <policy_ID>
    
  3. To delete a user or group from an MFA policy, delete the relevant yandex_organizationmanager_mfa_enforcement_audience resource from the configuration file and apply the changes.

Use the UpdateAudience REST API method for the MfaEnforcement resource or the MfaEnforcementService/UpdateAudience gRPC API call.

Note

You can add any type of user accounts to the MFA policy target groups, but the policy will only apply to federated and local user accounts.

If a group added to an MFA policy includes users with different account types, the policy will only apply to users with federated and local accounts.

See alsoSee also

  • Creating an MFA policy
  • Updating an MFA policy
  • Activating or deactivating an MFA policy
  • Deleting an MFA policy
  • Removing an MFA factor and resetting the verification date
  • Multi-factor authentication in Identity Hub

Was the article helpful?

Previous
Creating an MFA policy
Next
Updating an MFA policy
© 2026 Direct Cursus Technology L.L.C.