Posts

TL;DR Authentication or authorization? What is the term I need to use with my current scope of work? Do I need to authenticate the user or authorize it? Ok! I need to authenticate the user and then authorize (or the opposite). Dictionary: Authentication - is the process of verifying the identity of a user. How can we do it? As a basic scenario, when only one person knows the combination of login and password, we need to check if the combination is correct to authenticate the user. Authorization - verifies the user has the right to access the resources. Can I read the file? Can I write to the file? I would like to share how to build an authorization service. Big Picture I believe authentication and authorization can be separated - or treated on many different levels. When we consider the authorization for GitHub: ...

TL;DR Please stop using passwords. My stack is based on Yubikey and 1Password. Can I be a passwordless team member? Check my journey and answer the question. I improved my security with the following steps: Entra ID accounts without password, extended security on GitHub with GPG key, moved the SSH keys to 1Password, started using 1Password CLI to access secrets for ServicePrincipals. Big Picture Yubikey I started my journey with Blue Yubikey. After a couple of weeks, I notice two issues: ...

TL;DR You decided to build a web application in Azure - great! The solution contains App Service, CosmosDB, Blob Storage or other resouces. You started with really simple solution, but as IT Pro you decided to build three environments: Development, Test, and Production. You also decided to use Azure API Management to manage your APIs. You are aware of the security risks and you want to protect your resources. Please fallow my suggestion to use Azure FrontDoor and API Management to protect your resources. ...

Microsoft Entra ID External Identities vs Azure AD B2C. TL;DR A summary of differences between Entra ID and Azure AD B2C. Entra ID in this article is used to build a product. Differences between Entra ID and Azure AD B2C To share resources from your organization (Entra ID) like PowerBi, OneDrive, and SharePoint - use B2B collaboration. Please remember: in many cases, you must assign the expected licenses - PowerBI*, for example, and you will be able to use PowerBI Portal. ...

Here are some tips that can help you with user management: Use CIAM User Interface to create a new user: with Azure AD B2C Policy - User Journey, you can create a single point for all applications to create a new user, making the process efficient, streamlined, easy to improve and change. Don’t share personal information with applications: Adopt a zero-trust approach to avoid sharing personal information with applications. Instead, you can use centralised communication with end-users for marketing and other purposes (It is only possible with some business cases). Avoid using email addresses as user identifiers: Not sharing them reduces the possibility of them being used as identifiers by new and migrating to CIAM applications. Also, for all primary cases, email is a basic user identifier (with password); hiding email from applications gives you independence and flexibility in the future - for example, using FIDO or Passkey or without keeping an email address. Use REST|SCIM API with temporary access for applications: This can be useful for migration purposes, as it provides temporary access for applications - granting limited time-frame access so you can easily monitor API usage. The main channel for sign-up users is the User Interface (Policy) - (KISS rule - it will be easier to maintain one component). Use CIAM solutions like Azure AD B2C for password security: These solutions take care of passwords and other security measures for you, so you don’t have to worry about them. Remember that you don’t have access to the user passwords via API or management portal. ...