# Authentication & Authorization ### Identity & Access Management (IAM) #### IAM Components "Who" - **Azure Active Directory (AD)** - Manages Azure identities. Azure AD is a cloud-based identity service * One per tenant * Provides identity - "who you are?" * Identity = "**security principal**" (technical term) * Manage end users (people) or applications * Email format (end user) - "Can do what" - **Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)** - Provides fine-grained access management to Azure resources. Controls access using **roles**: * Assign roles to a security principal * **Roles** are collections of specific **permissions** * There are **general** role and **specific** role types: * Owner - general role type, full access to all resources in scope * Virtual Machine Contributor - only access to manage VMs "On which resources" - **Scope** - Controls the scope of access in the resource hierarchy. A scope defines a set of resources allowed to access: * Roles granted to various layers of the resource hierarchy * Lower levels inherit roles from the higher levels * Centralized management --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://notebook.iuriioapps.com/cloud/azure/authentication-and-authorization.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.