I am fairly new to Active directory and trying to understand it especially from application roles perspective.
I understand the use of Active Directory for authenticating internal corporate users and to implementing SSO across different applications.
What I am trying to gather are scenarios where Active directory can be used for application security ? Is it limited to creating domain users for application to use when interacting with other applications or are there other scenarios where it can be used ?
Example, in below diagram AD DS server has been added to the application landscape for 'computer objects for the failover cluster and its associated clustered roles are created in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)'. What does it really mean ?
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) provides secure and seamless access to cloud and on-premises applications. Users can sign in once to access Office 365 and other business applications from Microsoft, thousands of software as a service (SaaS) applications, on-premises applications, and line of business (LOB) apps. Besides, enabling single sign-on (SSO) across applications and Office 365 provides a superior sign in experience for existing users by reducing or eliminating sign in prompts. For the details, you could read here.
And Azure AD Domain Services provides managed domain services. You can consume these domain services without the need for you to deploy, manage, and patch domain controllers in the cloud. Azure AD Domain Services integrates with your existing Azure AD tenant, thus making it possible for users to log in using their corporate credentials.
For the details about Azure AD Domain Services, please read this doc.
Related
We use LDAP and our local SQL Server databases to authenticate our users, using Apache Shiro as the app is developed with Apache ISIS. Users in the SQL Server database are REST consumers, while LDAP contains only business users. Lastly, I was instructed to move my LDAP users to MS AAD.
Is there an architecture that allows me to keep both users? Business users will access the app through the MS OpenConnect portal. At the same time, other applications can continue using DB authentication to consume REST APIs.
Yes, it's possible. Actually, the essential of your questions is "how to enable multiple authentication manner s in web app". Since AAD authentication is claimed based, very different from LDAP, so you will need to change your code for sure to upgrade from LDAP to AAD.
Regarding multiple authentication, I don't know the platform you're using. Here is an sample for ASP.NET CORE for your reference:ASP.NET Core: Supporting multiple Authorization
I have an ASP.NET web application which has multitenancy supported in it . I have a requirement to integrate microsoft graph to access and write to outlook calendars.My question is , will every Tenant have its own application id and secret key ? Or will one secret key and application Id be common to all tenants ? Please provide me details of what needs to be changed as this is somehow misleading and vague.
Thanks in advance.
This is discussed in the docs under Step 4 of Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform:
Supported account types - Select which accounts you would like your application to support.
Accounts in this organizational directory only - Select this option if you're building a line-of-business (LOB) application. This option is not available if you're not registering the application in a directory.
This option maps to Azure AD only single-tenant.
This is the default option unless you're registering the app outside of a directory. In cases where the app is registered outside of a directory, the default is Azure AD multi-tenant and personal Microsoft accounts.
Accounts in any organizational directory - Select this option if you would like to target all business and educational customers.
This option maps to an Azure AD only multi-tenant.
If you registered the app as Azure AD only single-tenant, you can update it to be Azure AD multi-tenant and back to single-tenant through the Authentication blade.
Accounts in any organizational directory and personal Microsoft accounts - Select this option to target the widest set of customers.
This option maps to Azure AD multi-tenant and personal Microsoft accounts.
If you registered the app as Azure AD multi-tenant and personal Microsoft accounts, you cannot change this in the UI. Instead, you must use the application manifest editor to change the supported account types.
I am not sure this is possible, but can Azure AD be trusted by a local on-premises domain?
I can see plenty of information on extending the local domain into Azure, but my requirement is more of less the reverse of this.
Ideally I would like the local domain to trust Azure AD, but as an alternative
could Azure AD DS be used to extend Azure AD into an Azure AD DS domain and then have a two way trust with the local domain?
I am not sure this is possible, but can Azure AD be trusted by a local
on-premises domain?
As I know, there is no way to make Azure AD be trusted by a local on-premise domain.
Azure AD is used for authentication for Internet-based services such as Office 365 and Azure, as well as much more, including Facebook and thousands of other services that are already federated with Azure AD (which mean they trust Azure AD without you having to do anything other than enable that application or service to be used by your users).
Your on-premises Active Directory can be synced to Azure AD by using Azure AD Connect (including password sync) and federation. This allows users on their corporate assets to log on with their AD account and when they access Internet services, such as Office 365, authentication with Azure AD just happens seamlessly via the federation, allowing access to all the different services that Azure AD is federated with.
Azure AD Domain Services provides managed domain services such as domain join, group policy, LDAP, Kerberos/NTLM authentication that are fully compatible with Windows Server Active Directory. You can consume these domain services without the need for you to deploy, manage, and patch domain controllers in the cloud. Azure AD Domain Services integrates with your existing Azure AD tenant, thus making it possible for users to log in using their corporate credentials.
I have few very specific questions to come to a understanding on Active Directory usage:
ADFS are the services/software to enable SSO login to applications using a single url for users stored in Active Directory. Right?
LDAP is a protocol that exposes other functionalities like fetching users, deleting user, authentication user via bind method etc. stored in Active Directory. Right?
Then can't LDAP and ADFS both work on the same Active directory? This link:
LDAP support in ADFS got me confused in where it is referring to LD and AD as separate entities.
Can't I apply both the mechanisms on same AD? I only have knowledge of LDAP. Trying to learn ADFS.
ADFS provides SSO capabilities for SaaS services and Modern LOB applications. Traditionally, it uses identities stored in Active Directory Domain Services to validate the credentials for a user. In 2016, we also added support to include identities stored in any 3rd party LDAP directory.
Irrespective of where the identity is stored ADFS offers SSO across the applications that trust it.
Hope this clarifies.
Thanks //Sam (Twitter: #MrADFS)
AD stores users, groups and credentials.
To access an attribute in AD, you use the LDAP protocol via e.g. the C# Directory Services API.
ADFS handles authentication against AD and also adds a federation layer on top of AD.
The correct way to access AD attributes via ADFS is to use claims-based authentication whereby you configure ADFS to provision the attributes (as claims) into the token and then extract them on the client side.
My small company (about 100 users) is currently using Office 365. There have previously not been any domain controller. I am building an on premise domain controller and want to sync it with Azure Active Directory (Office 365). I used the sync service, with a small subset of users to no avail.
My main question: Can you sync FROM an Azure Active Directory to a new on premise Active Directory? My understanding is that it's the opposite - the on premise Active Directory is the "master" if you will. Is there a way to set it up the opposite? As in, Office 365 being the "master" or "seed" for an on premise?
At present, the Azure AD connect support the Password writeback, Group writeback and Device writeback.
You can refer the options features of Azure AD Connect from here.
At this point in time, synchronizing users FROM Azure AD to on-premises AD is NOT possible.
As Fei Xue pointed out, there are certain things (such as user passwords, groups and devices) that can be synchronized back to on-prem AD, but not users.
Depending on what you are trying to achieve, Azure Active Directory DS might be worth exploring as it allows you to create a VNet in Azure which has a AD-like support (LDAP, Active Directory domain join, NTLM, and Kerberos authentication).
More info on Azure AD DS: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/active-directory-ds/