Guest account
A guest account represents someone given access to an organization's resources under a guest relationship, commonly an external partner or contractor.
Guest describes a relationship, not every permission
A guest account lets an organization assign access to a partner or contractor without treating them as an employee. Record who sponsors that access and when the work ends, so someone can remove it when it is no longer needed.
In Microsoft Entra, B2B users have objects in the resource organization’s directory. They can receive group memberships and application assignments. The Guest user type does not mean the account has no sensitive access.
Microsoft also distinguishes authentication from the guest/member relationship: an external identity can be a member, and a guest can use internally managed credentials. Do not infer the identity provider from the label alone.
An accepted invitation is not the whole approval
Invitation state, business approval, and resource permissions answer different questions. Someone accepting an invitation does not establish that a contract exists or that every assigned resource is needed.
Review the actual group and application assignments when approving or ending guest access. Copying another contractor’s memberships can bring along permissions the new guest never needed. The guest approval article walks through the invitation, business approval, and access records to compare.