Microsoft Identity Platform

For next few weeks, I’ll go through MS Identity Platform and share how application can use the Platform to authenticate and authorize the users.

Microsoft Identity platform components includes

Authentication/Authorization services based on the industry standards OAuth 2.0 , OpenID Connect , SAML v2.0 and RBAC
MSAL (Microsoft Authentication Library)
Application Management Portal (Used for Application registration and configuration)
Application configuration via API and PowerShell

Authentication

What is it?

Authentication is the process of proving that you are who you say you are.

Supported Industry standard ?

Microsoft Identity Platform supports OpenID Connect. Azure AD supports SAML and WS-Federation.

Authorization

What is it?

Authorization is the act of granting an authenticated party permission to do something.

What are Industry standard supported ?

Microsoft Identity Platform uses OAuth 2.0 Protocol. Role Based Access control (RBAC) provides access management for azure resources.

Before we see how Microsoft Identity Platform is using the Industry standard . I’ll briefly explain about basics of the standards.

SAML V2.0

SAML stands for Security Assertion Markup Language and works based on XML between IDP and SDP.
IDP , (Example Azure AD) Identity Provider authenticates and authorizes the users.
SDP (Example , Application), Trusts the IDP and provides access to the users.
SAML works based on claim based authentication. Claim is an attribute (Like Username, Email Address) added to the authentication token.

(Snip from Auth0 blog)

SAML SSO Flow

User logs into the application. This created SAML request and redirects to the IDP (In this case Auth0)
IDP authentication and authorizes the uses and sends the SAML response back to the browser. Which in return is send to the SDP.
After successful verification, the users is logged into the Application.

Here is a Link on how to integrate SAML SSO with SAAS application (In this case Atlassian)

Next week , we will look into OAuth 2.0 and how it works along OpenID Connect.

Microsoft Identity Platform – Part 1