And like with passwords I wouldnt recommend to use the Never value as this means the client secret (password) will never expire. Most software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications accommodate multi-tenancy. In (almost) all cases this will be the Application ID. How do I give him the information he wants? The tenant secures the service principal sign-in and access to resources. I really appreciate the time that you took to explain this topic. The code below will get the thumbprint of the certificate from the personal certificate store and use it as the login credential. You can create an application and its service principal object (ObjectID) in a tenant using: There are two mechanisms for authentication, when using service principalsclient certificates and client secrets. If you use PowerShell to retrieve those the cmdlet is Get-AzureADServicePrincipal, this will display all Enterprise Applications within the Azure AD. It's scoped just like anything else. Which is the Application ID and Tenant ID. Always make sure to save the service principals password because there is no way to recover it if you were not able to save or have forgotten it. A multi-tenant web application or API requires a service principal in each tenant. Confirm by clicking create and Wait for the resource creation to complete successfully. Yes, they can login via the GUI with the service account if they really want to (which might actually be a useful thing sometimes). An Azure service principal is a security identity used by user-created apps, services, and automation tools to access specific Azure resources. See the screenshot below as an example. A service principal, on the other hand, is treated more like a domain user within Azure. Using service accounts allowed us to avoid embedding our own network usernames and password into these automation tasks. For example, access to a resource. A service principal is the local representation, or application instance, of a global application object in a single tenant or directory. Account script or application function is retired. Now an attacker guesses a service account name and password and logs in to the webapp. #Define variables[string]$WorkspaceID = 69b37e8d-870c-457a-8c98-f9e993e42318$UserPrincipalName = johny.bravo@identity-man.eu, #Create the query for log analytics workspace for last sign in for user which goes back 180 days$QuerySignInCount = SigninLogs | where TimeGenerated > ago(180d) | where UserPrincipalName == + $UserPrincipalName + | summarize signInCount = count() by UserPrincipalName | sort by signInCount desc, #Execute the query and summarize the count$ResultsSignInCount = Invoke-AzOperationalInsightsQuery -WorkspaceId $WorkspaceID -Query $QuerySignInCount$AADSigninCount = $ResultsSignInCount.Results.signInCount, #Write-ouputWrite-output User $UserPrincipalName has $AADSigninCount sign-ins in Azure AD in the last 180 days!. For that, you can utilize the .NET static method GeneratePassword(). You will want to know what the secret is. Once created, you will see that we have created an Enterprise Application within the Azure AD Portal and this can be referred to as a Service Principal, as explained earlier. Governing Azure AD service account is managing creation, permissions, and lifecycle to ensure security and continuity. If you can't use a managed identity, use a service principal. In this example, a new service principal will be created with these values: As you can see, the scope of this new service principal is only for the virtual machine named AzVM1. Use this measurement to schedule communications to the owner, disable, and then delete the accounts. When you create automation service accounts or Service Principals you should really think about what rights you give them. And for sure, your IT Sec will give you a lot of grief if you did all that. User Assigned Managed Identity, which means that you first have to create it as a stand-alone Azure resource by itself, after which it can be linked to multiple Azure Resources. Name the application Power Platform Service Principal and allow Accounts in this organizational directory only to use it. Issue mitigation is done by the owner, or by request to an IT team. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The service account was a bit like a user account with a username and password, and it often had access to local and network resources to perform these automation tasks. While this seems all fair from a security perspective, since we are not literally using the Azure administrative accounts (former service account concepts, remember) anymore, there are also a few challenges involved in using SPs: Where Service Principals are important and very useful from a security perspective, I also pointed out some challenges. As a guideline: Using application permissions will allow the application to process actions completely independent, whereas delegated permissions require a user logon and will therefore provide the user the access based on the access configured on the Service Principal. the Windows Hello for Business authentication methods as you can see below via the command: Get-MgUserAuthenticationWindowsHello -UserID johny.bravo@identity-man.eu. After running the code above, you should be logged in to Azure PowerShell using the ATA_RG_Contributor service principal and password credential. This has nothing to do with security though. The techniques you learned in this article covered only the basics to get you started in using Azure service principals in your automation. Azure Service Principal vs. Service Account Automation tools and scripts often need admin or privileged access. SPNs are used by Kerberos authentication to associate a service instance (ex. And, to confirm the security measures in terms of API permissions, Im not able to retrieve any groups from the Azure Active Directory. We recommend collecting the following data and tracking it in your centralized Configuration Management Database (CMDB). We recommend you export Azure AD sign-in logs, and then import them into a security information and event management (SIEM) tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. Meaning the service principal determines the permissions the process will get after a sign-in. domain\WebserverServiceAccount). In simple words this means a Service Principal can either be a reference to an application in another environment, or can refer to a (gateway-) application which is hosted in- and connected to your tenant. First, make sure that the user account which is running the PowerShell session has the certificate stored in the personal user certificate store. For more information, see Azure AD/AzureADAssessment. The ApplicationID represents the global application and is the same for application instances, across tenants. The Azure service principal has been created in the previous section, but with no Role and Scope. Azure AD App Registrations, Enterprise Apps and Service Principals - YouTube 0:00 33:43 Azure AD App Registrations, Enterprise Apps and Service Principals John Savill's Technical Training. Log in with a service principal As you can see Im successfully connected! 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. JavaScript is disabled. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-key-vault-references. Typical use cases where you would rely on a Service Principal is for example when running Terraform IAC (Infrastructure as Code) deployments, or when using Azure DevOps for example, where you define a Service Connection from DevOps Pipelines to Azure; or basically any other 3rd party application requiring an authentication token to connect to Azure resources. 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. Now to put the service principal to use. Once the certificate is selected we can see the Thumbprint of the certificate in the Azure Portal as well. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/ ermissions. Then click Register. To create a managed identity, go the Azure portal and navigate to the managed identity blade. Of course, it is! objectId will be a unique value for application object and each of the service principal. The only required part is the Display Name. I'm not sure what you mean by "typical Azure user". This consent creates a one-to-many relationship between the multi-tenant application and its associated service principals. Service principals and managed identities can use OAuth 2.0 scopes in a delegated context impersonating a signed-on user, or as service account in the application context. Now, depending on the module or application for which you want to use a service principal, first determine which methods are supported. To log in via PowerShell it is slightly more complex and requires a bit more code. In here hit + Add a permission. Now that you have the password string, the next step is to create the Microsoft.Azure.Commands.ActiveDirectory.PSADPasswordCredential object. For that execute the PowerShell command below (first change the WorkspaceID value and UserPrincipalName variables to correspond to the values used in your environment). A multi-tenant application is homed in a tenant and has instances in other tenants. Select App registrations and + New registration. In the above code GeneratePassword(20, 6), the first value means the length of the password, and the second value means the number of non-alphanumeric characters to include. The Azure AD application you create has an identity called the service principal, which keeps track of what permissions the application has across all Azure resources. Want to support the writer? ;). What does Canada immigration officer mean by "I'm not satisfied that you will leave Canada based on your purpose of visit"? Avoid creating multi-use service accounts. (NOT interested in AI answers, please). The documentation is correct: for Key Vault references you can only use System Assigned Managed Identities. The formal definitions from Microsoft explains service principal as " An Azure service principal is a security identity used by user-created apps, services, and automation tools to access. Labels: Access Management Azure Active Directory (AAD) Identity Management This as the App Registration is simply a different object in your Azure AD, however both objects belong to the same application in Azure AD as you can see. Within Azure when we want to automate tasks we have to use something similar, and its called a 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). The app registration is only ever created once in the app's home tenant, however a . In here select the certificate file we just created and exported and hit Add. Application permissions are used when the application itself is connecting, i.e. Please hit Yes to confirm the admin consent approval. For example, you can create an Azure service principal that has role-based access to an entire subscription or a single Azure virtual machine only. Additionally, provide the scope for the role assignment. So by using service principals we can replace service accounts currently used and therefore improve the security posture of your environment! In this article, youll learn about what Azure Service Principal is. Required fields are marked *. But again, there are no means to secure service principals any further. The code below will create the Azure service principal that will use the self-signed certificate as its credential. And most admins probably use a fully privileged user account (called a service account) to set up the credential requirements for scripts. 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