Differentiating authentication from authorization
A significant and essential role of any platform is that of authentication and authorization. These two terms are often confused and combined as a single entity. When understanding security on platforms such as Azure, it's vital to know how the different technologies are used.
Authentication is the act of proving who you are, often performed with a username/password combination. If you can provide the correct details, a system authenticates you.
Authentication does not give you access to anything; it merely proves who you are.
Once a system knows the who, it then checks to see what you have access to—this is termed authorization.
In Azure, authorization is the act of checking whether you have access to a particular resource such as a storage account, and what actions you can perform, such as creating, deleting, modifying, or even reading the data in the storage account.
Because of the number of different services...