Managed Identity

Problem

Your Azure application needs to read files from Azure Storage. Giving it: CLIENT_ID CLIENT_SECRET creates another secret that somebody must store, protect and rotate.

Solution — Managed Identity

Azure gives the workload an identity and manages its credentials.

Application
    ↓ its identity
Microsoft Entra ID
    ↓ issues an access token for Azure Storage
Application
    ↓ sends the token with its file request
Azure Storage

You grant permissions to the identity instead of storing credentials in the application.

Core idea: managed identities let Azure workloads authenticate without application-managed secrets.