Understanding authentication and authorization in Azure

Authentication means validating a user by using credentials to ensure that they are a valid user on the enterprise system. Authorization validates their rights to access a particular resource or perform certain operations on it.

There are various methods of authentication, starting with simple usernames and passwords to more sophisticated authentication mechanisms such as token-based, multi-factor, certificate-based, and other security techniques. A username and password represent the simplest and most insecure way of authenticating users. For more secure methods of authentication, there are various frameworks and platforms available, and these are called providers. While there are many authentication providers available that can be used on the Azure cloud, the best practice is to use only one provider for the entire enterprise. The enterprise-class authentication provider in Azure is Microsoft Entra ID — referred as...