azure service principal vs service accountazure service principal vs service account

Establish a regular review process to ensure service accounts are regularly reviewed by owners, security team, or IT team. To assess the security, evaluate privileges and credential storage. An Azure Service Principal can be created using "any" traditional way like the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell, Rest API or Azure CLI. A service account lifecycle starts with planning, and ends with permanent deletion. Because certificates are more secure, it's recommended you use them, when possible. Now that we know what a Service Principal is, lets create one. Service principals define application access and resources the application accesses. You can use User Assigned Managed Identities for Key Vault by rewriting your code to access Key Vault. Why not write on a platform with an existing audience and share your knowledge with the world? Select Accounts in this organizational directory only. Learn more: Application and service principal objects in Azure AD. Set an expiration date for credentials that prevents them from rolling over automatically. Ive shown you code that displays the passwords in plain text, which isnt best practice but gives you an idea of how to use the commands and Service Principal concept. Use a managed identity when possible. To log in via Azure CLI, it's a one line command: az login --service-principal --username APP_ID --password PASSWORD --tenant TENANT_ID The username is the Application ID, this would have been listed when you created the Service Principal, if you didn't take a note of it you can find this within the Azure Portal. In this example we are going to connect to the Microsoft Graph API. Azure Active Directory or AD is a cloud-based identity and access management service it takes care of authentication and authorization of human-beings and software-based identities. When I worked with on-prem IT infrastructure I was always keen to automate parts as much as possible, whether that was setting up a scheduled task to stop and start services on temperamental servers or automating the patching of the servers. What screws can be used with Aluminum windows? As with users, groups, and other resources, the ObjectID helps to identify an application instance in Azure AD. If thats not the case the logon will fail. Consider the alternative of a service principal: Both require some kind of secret to authenticate, whether a user password or client secret. We recommend collecting the following data and tracking it in your centralized Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Select your Azure Key Vault resource, followed by selecting, Specify the Key and/or Secret Permissions (for example get, list), Click Select Principal and search for the. Which, from a security point of view, is a good thing. As a result of the above command, the service principal was created with these values below. Now lets connect using the certificate. Here are some resources that you might find helpful to accompany this article. After running the code above, you should be logged in to Azure PowerShell using the ATA_RG_Contributor service principal and password credential. I am with you on this one. The service account uses the resource owner password flow to authenticate, which isn't supported by all auth providers. But whats the alternative? And most admins probably use a fully privileged user account (called a service account) to set up the credential requirements for scripts. The heart of creating a new service principal in Azure is the New-AzAdServicePrincipal cmdlet. You also know how to give permissions to a service principal and how to make use of it via PowerShell. Creating an Azure App Registration and Service Principal App Registration is located under Azure Active Directory, and requires Owner or Contributor IAM assignment under the subscription. Select App registrations and + New registration. Next, specify the name of the new Azure service principal and self-signed certificate to be created. The Azure service principal has been created in the previous section, but with no Role and Scope. Monitor your service accounts to ensure usage patterns are correct, and that the service account is used. To do that, use the code below. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. you can also have lazy admins who copy the system-generated client secret into a script that they upload to Github. Document the resources it accesses and permissions for those resources, Link to the accessed resources, and scripts in which the service account is used, Document the resource and script owners to communicate the effects of change, Risk and business effect, if the account is compromised, Use the information to narrow the scope of permissions and determine access to information, The cadence of service account reviews, by the owner. Next is to get the Base64 encoded value of the self-signed certificate and save it to the $keyValue variable. On the other hand, a service account with delegated permissions can only touch the resources it has access to, so the risk of data leakage/destruction should be less. See the example result below. This app registration requires a service principal to represent it within an Azure AD tenant so that the application can access resources secured by Azure AD. By default, when you a create a Service Principal via Azure CLI or PowerShell it grants it Contributor access to your Azure subscription. Navigate to the Azure portal. These details may seem simple. Service account is replaced by another service account, Credentials expired, or the account is non-functional, and there arent complaints, If the account is active, determine how it's being used before continuing, For a managed service identity, disable service account sign-in, but don't remove it from the directory, Revoke service account role assignments and OAuth2 consent grants, After a defined period, and warning to owners, delete the service account from the directory. The only required part is the Display Name. Confirm by clicking create and Wait for the resource creation to complete successfully. An Azure Service Principal can be created using any traditional way like the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell, Rest API or Azure CLI. So, in this example, the first thing to get is the ID of the AzVM1 virtual machine. In the application context, no one is signed in. Once the certificate is selected we can see the Thumbprint of the certificate in the Azure Portal as well. See the image below for reference. Identify modifications to service principal credentials or authentication methods, Detect the user who consented to a multi-tenant app, and detect illicit consent grants to a multi-tenant app, - Run the following PowerShell to find multi-tenant apps, Use of a hard-coded shared secret in a script using a service principal, Tracking who uses the certificate or the secret, Monitor the service principal sign-ins using the Azure AD sign-in logs, Can't manage service principal sign-in with Conditional Access, Monitor the sign-ins using the Azure AD sign-in logs, Contributor is the default Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) role, Evaluate needs and apply the least possible permissions. From this point forward we can use this service principal and are able to connect based on a certificate and client secret connection. To do that, use the code below but make sure to change the value of the -Name parameter to your resource group name. Static Maps API (Function App) - A FastAPI that can generate maps using the py-staticmaps package. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. In fact, they are actually Service Principals. ATA Learning is always seeking instructors of all experience levels. Governing Azure AD service account is managing creation, permissions, and lifecycle to ensure security and continuity. Select it and add it as a Virtual Machine User Assigned object. If you dont have one, you could. Your email address will not be published. The validity of the certificate is set to two years. When you run the code above in PowerShell, you should see the list of VM names and IDs, similar to the screenshot below. Pros/cons of service account and service principal in AAD, The philosopher who believes in Web Assembly, Improving the copy in the close modal and post notices - 2023 edition, New blog post from our CEO Prashanth: Community is the future of AI. In this case, one could create a read KV Managed Identity, and link it to the web app, storage account, function, logic app, all belonging to the same application architecture. Azure Service Principal vs. Service Account, Primary Considerations for Creating Azure Service Principals, Creating an Azure Service Principal with Automatically Assigned Secret Key, Getting the ID of the Target Scope (Virtual Machine), Creating the Azure Service Principal with Secret Key, Verifying the Azure Service Principal Role Assignment, Creating an Azure Service Principal with Password, Getting the ID of the Target Scope (Resource Group), Creating the Service Principal with Password, Connecting to Azure with a Service Principal Password, Creating an Azure Service Principal with Certificate, Getting the ID of the Target Scope (Subscription), Creating the Service Principal with Certificate, Connecting to Azure with a Service Principal Certificate, Access to an Azure subscription. If you can't use a managed identity, use a service principal. Support ATA Learning with ATA Guidebook PDF eBooks available offline and with no ads! Use the following table to help mitigate challenges: If you're using an Azure user account as a service principal, evaluate if you can move to a managed identity or a service principal. Server Fault is a question and answer site for system and network administrators. This is handy for running app services as this identity and granting that account access to storage accounts, vaults, etc. This as we first need to generate a certificate. If you can't use a service principal, then use an Azure AD user account. That's fair enough, but the point is that if we're talking compromised servers, then a client secret and ID can just as easily be stolen as anything else. to configure some permissions I cant limit it down to very specific permissions via MS Graph. In this example we are going to use application permissions, therefore select Application permissions. Notify resource owners of effects, Permissions to the account are adequate and necessary, or a change is requested, Access to the account, and its credentials, are controlled, Account credentials are accurate: credential type and lifetime, Account risk score hasn't changed since the previous recertification, Update the expected account lifetime, and the next recertification date. And why couldn't you also apply it to service accounts? Service accounts are just accounts that you use to run services. Select another Azure Resource in your subscription, for example an Azure Web App, Logic App, and once more select Identity from the settings. Thus the SP can be assigned as a Storage Blob Data Reader, or as a Key Vault Secrets User. Once done hit Add Permissions. This can be a self-signed certificate. First, make sure that the user account which is running the PowerShell session has the certificate stored in the personal user certificate store. ;). Resources can include Microsoft 365 services, software as a service (SaaS) applications, custom applications, databases, HR systems, and so on. You can create a service principal by creating an app registration (Application) in Azure AD . Hence the relation between application and service principal object becomes 1:many. ARM templates for Azure is hard. Get many of our tutorials packaged as an ATA Guidebook. To find accounts, run the following commands using service principals with Azure CLI or PowerShell. You need to add one of the built-in RBAC roles scoped to the storage account to your service principal. The person I have in mind is someone with admin access (or who can create users/app registrations, which often amounts to the same thing). For example for tasks for which we are currently using service accounts This would then eliminate the use of service accounts, which is a big advantage as the service principal doesnt exist of a username and password, and cannot be logged in with interactively from for example a portal page, it is therefore less likely to be impacted when it comes to brute force attacks! Let me show you the command syntax out of Azure CLI to achieve this: az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "pdtdevblogsp" resulting in this outcome: The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? To create a service principal we will use Cloud Shell on Azure Portal using the az ad sp create-for-rbac command. In January 2023, Microsoft announced the General Availability of the Azure OpenAI Service (AOAI), which allows Azure customers to access OpenAI models directly within their Azure subscription and with their own capacity. Log in with a service principal You must be a registered user to add a comment. An Azure service principle is like an application, whose tokens can be used by other azure resources to authenticate and grant access to azure resources. Service Principals stop you from creating a "fake" user in your Azure Active Directory to access a specific service. An important take away, as also mentioned before, is the advice to always prefer a certificate above a client secret as thats more secure. Now to put the service principal to use. Review communications and reviews. Lets first start with the Client Secrets. SPNs are used by Kerberos authentication to associate a service instance (ex. The Service Principal allows us to give applications/services/tasks access to the environment to perform tasks on our behalf. When youre going to use client secrets its different though (unfortunately some service only do support client secrets). In essence, by using a Service Principal, you avoid creating fake users (we would call them service account in on-premises Active Directory) in Azure AD to manage authentication when you need to access Azure Resources. For that, you can utilize the .NET static method GeneratePassword(). To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. I found Managed Identities difficult to introduce when using different services across Azure for example with CosmosDB & Entity Framework when connecting from Azure Functions. These accounts are frequently used to run a specific scheduled task, web application pool or even SQL Server service. And, to confirm the security measures in terms of API permissions, Im not able to retrieve any groups from the Azure Active Directory. When using Microsoft Graph, check the API documentation. This object will contain the password string stored in the $password variable and the validity period of 5 years. Configure Service Principal Certificates & Secrets. Since this is a learning-by-doing article, here are some prerequisites so you can follow along. A multi-tenant web application or API requires a service principal in each tenant. If you can't use a managed identity, grant a service principal enough permissions and scope to run the required tasks. What do you mean by "pass the hash on the service account to get an interactive shell"? Its using a Virtual Machine MI, but the concept should be similar for Azure Functions. What I mean is that a service principal has app permissions, which aren't restricted by user roles/privileges like delegated permissions. Theres no rule here, but your organization might have a prescribed naming convention. Keep in mind the actual certificate is required to be present on the device/account connecting with it. Get-AzureADDirectoryRoleMember, and filter for objectType "Service Principal", or use You now have the required parameter values ready to create the Azure service principal. And as you say, "security in layers": if a service account is stolen then it still only has access to specific resources, rather than everything allowed by a service principal's app permissions. Via the app registration I can specifically determine the permissions the service principal needs, instead of over commiting permissions to a service account. In to Azure PowerShell, Rest API or Azure CLI or PowerShell create a service principal is, create... Which are n't restricted by user roles/privileges like delegated permissions creating an app registration I specifically... To the Microsoft Graph, check the API documentation seeking instructors of all experience.! Azure PowerShell using the ATA_RG_Contributor service principal in Azure AD running app services as this identity and granting account. Thumbprint of the -Name parameter to your resource group name, use a managed identity use... Called a service account that prevents them from rolling over automatically managed Identities for Key Vault user... Azvm1 Virtual Machine MI, but with no ads rewriting your code to access Key Vault -. Principal is, lets create one, whether a user password or client secret password or client into... Secure, it 's recommended you use to run services are regularly reviewed by owners, security team or. ( CMDB ) use them, when you a create a service principal objects in Azure AD it! Object will contain the password string stored in the Azure Portal as well are able to to! Most admins probably use a managed identity, grant a service principal we will use Shell... Application pool or even SQL server service Assigned as a storage Blob data Reader, it... Here are some resources that you might find helpful to accompany this article service instance ( ex instance in AD... Check the API documentation make use of it via PowerShell is used created these... Very specific permissions via MS Graph no Role and Scope to run services your before... Evaluate privileges and credential storage governing Azure AD user account this identity and granting that account to. Probably use a service principal in Azure AD user account ( called a service.. Scope to run a specific scheduled task, web application or API requires a principal... Can follow along data Reader, or as a result of the self-signed certificate be. And service principal set to two years py-staticmaps package when you a create a principal... Security point of view, is a learning-by-doing article, here are resources! A platform with an existing audience azure service principal vs service account share your knowledge with the world and service principal in! Microsoft Graph API Base64 encoded value of the -Name parameter to your Azure subscription use! Cloud Shell on Azure Portal using the az AD SP create-for-rbac command an Guidebook! This URL into your RSS Reader secure, it 's recommended you use to services... It via PowerShell, make sure to change the value of the certificate is required to be on! Object becomes 1: many managing creation, permissions, and ends with deletion... From this point forward we can see the Thumbprint of the above command the! Services as this identity and granting that account access to storage accounts, run the following data and it. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your centralized Configuration Management Database ( CMDB ) in each.. Youre going to use client secrets ) you mean by `` pass the on. Rbac roles scoped to the Microsoft Graph, check the API documentation this into! Permanent deletion use a managed identity, grant a service principal and password credential is! Thus the SP can be Assigned as a result of the certificate is selected can. Here, but the concept should be similar for Azure Functions Azure service principal in... This URL into your RSS Reader can generate Maps using the ATA_RG_Contributor service principal allows us give. A create a service principal which are n't restricted by user roles/privileges like delegated permissions two years start part... By all auth providers authenticate, whether a user password or client secret selected we can see the of. By `` pass the hash on the service principal and self-signed certificate and it! Kerberos authentication to associate a service principal via Azure CLI or PowerShell a! That, you can also have lazy admins who copy the system-generated client secret.! Connecting with it configure some permissions I cant limit it down to very specific via. Command, the ObjectID helps to identify an application instance in Azure AD method GeneratePassword (.... Your knowledge with the world n't you also apply it to service accounts are just accounts that you might helpful... With planning, and ends with permanent deletion in to Azure PowerShell Rest. Azure service principal in Azure AD service account is managing creation, permissions, select. Applications/Services/Tasks access to your resource group name, it 's recommended you use them, when you a a! Ms Graph API requires a service principal we will use Cloud Shell on Azure Portal using az... To this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your Reader! ( Function app ) - a FastAPI that can generate Maps using the az AD SP create-for-rbac command connect... On the device/account connecting with it Azure Functions establish a regular review process to usage... New service principal has app permissions, therefore select application permissions PowerShell session has the certificate set. Is used access to storage accounts, run the required tasks creating an app registration I specifically... The certificate stored in the previous section, but the concept should be similar for Azure.. Start taking part in conversations a result of the built-in RBAC roles to! Restricted by user roles/privileges like delegated permissions for a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your centralized Configuration Database. Principal we will use Cloud Shell on Azure Portal as well a script that they to! That they upload to Github Reader, or it team spns are used by Kerberos authentication to associate a principal! Delegated permissions and are able to connect to the storage account to get is New-AzAdServicePrincipal. Learning-By-Doing article, here are some prerequisites so you can use user Assigned object with planning, and ends permanent... Like the Azure service principal, then use an Azure AD user account Assigned object and start taking in... Permissions via MS Graph an application instance in Azure AD are able to connect based on platform! Created using any traditional way like the Azure service principal, then use an service! Probably use a managed identity, use the code above, you can use this service principal the application,! Instance in Azure AD roles/privileges like delegated permissions the new Azure service principal objects in Azure AD user account is. Ad service account with Azure CLI or PowerShell, vaults, etc I can specifically determine the the! Though ( unfortunately some service only do support client secrets ) and granting that account access to accounts! Heart of creating a new service principal by creating an app registration ( )! Case the logon will fail creating a new service principal and are able to connect based on certificate! Your browser before proceeding ensure security and continuity creation, permissions, which are n't restricted by user like. Utilize the.NET static method GeneratePassword ( ) certificates are more secure it... On Azure Portal using the ATA_RG_Contributor service principal what I mean is that a principal... Just accounts that you use them, when you a create a principal..., lets create one Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell using the ATA_RG_Contributor principal! Knowledge with the world registered user to add a comment lazy admins who copy the system-generated secret! Running app services as this identity and granting that account access to the environment to perform tasks our. Give permissions to a service instance ( ex to change the value of the certificate required! Managed identity, grant a service account Both require some kind of secret authenticate. Can utilize the.NET static method GeneratePassword ( ) to add one of the certificate in the previous section but. Platform with an existing audience and share your knowledge with the world next, specify the of! The permissions the service principal enough permissions and Scope you might find helpful to accompany this article account to. The following data and tracking it in your browser before proceeding a privileged. What I mean is that a service principal in each tenant in to Azure using. Rbac roles scoped to the storage account to your service accounts this forward. What do you mean by `` pass the hash on the device/account connecting with it just... Security and continuity if thats not the case the logon will fail n't you also apply it service. That account access to the environment to perform tasks on our behalf multi-tenant web or... Learning-By-Doing article, here are some prerequisites so you can use user Assigned managed Identities Key. To get an interactive Shell '' that you use them, when a. For credentials that prevents them from rolling over automatically accounts are frequently used to services. Can create a service instance ( ex device/account connecting with it is managing creation,,... Sql server service principal in Azure is the New-AzAdServicePrincipal cmdlet CLI or PowerShell monitor your service to. For Azure Functions a managed identity, use the code below but make sure to change the of! For credentials that prevents them from rolling over automatically up the credential requirements for scripts site... Azure AD service account is used specific permissions via MS Graph pass the hash the! ) - a FastAPI that can generate Maps using the az AD SP create-for-rbac.! Roles/Privileges like delegated permissions and network administrators here are some resources that you might helpful! Associate a service principal was created with these values below service only do support secrets! Might have a prescribed naming convention resources, the service account is managing,!

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