Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
291 lines (208 loc) · 17.3 KB

about-security-identity.md

File metadata and controls

291 lines (208 loc) · 17.3 KB
title titleSuffix description ms.subservice ms.author author ms.topic monikerRange ms.date
About security, authentication, authorization, and security policies
Azure DevOps
Learn how Azure DevOps manages security through authentication, authorization, and policies
azure-devops-security
chcomley
chcomley
overview
<= azure-devops
03/23/2023

About security, authentication, and authorization

[!INCLUDE version-lt-eq-azure-devops]

Azure DevOps employs many security concepts to ensure only those users who should have access to features, functions, and data have access. Accounts get access to Azure DevOps through authentication of their security credentials and authorization of their account entitlements to access a feature or function.

This article builds on the information provided in Get started with permissions, access, and security groups. Administrators benefit from understanding the account types, authentication methods, authorization methods, and policies used to secure Azure DevOps.

::: moniker range="azure-devops"

:::row::: :::column span="1"::: Account types - Users - Organization owner - Service accounts - Service principals - Job agents

  **Authentication**
  - User credentials
  - Windows authentication
  - Two-factor authentication (2FA)
  - SSH key authentication
  - Personal access tokens
  - Oauth configuration 
  - Active Directory authentication library

:::column-end::: :::column span="1"::: Authorization - Security group membership - Role-based access control - Access levels - Feature flags - Security namespaces & permissions

  **Policies**
  - Privacy policy URL
  - Application connection and security policies
  - User policies
  - Git repository and branch policies

:::column-end::: :::row-end:::

::: moniker-end

::: moniker range="< azure-devops"

:::row::: :::column span="1"::: Account types - Users - Service accounts - Service principals - Job agents

  **Authentication**
  - User credentials
  - Windows authentication
  - Two-factor authentication (2FA)
  - SSH key authentication
  - Personal access tokens
  - Oauth configuration 
  - Active Directory authentication library

:::column-end::: :::column span="1"::: Authorization - Security group membership - Role-based permissions - Access levels - Feature flags - Security namespaces & permissions

  **Policies**
  - Git repository and branch policies

:::column-end::: :::row-end:::

::: moniker-end

[!INCLUDE alt-creds-deprecation-notice]

Both our cloud service, Azure DevOps Services, and on-premises server, Azure DevOps Server, support software development projects, from planning through deployment. Azure DevOps uses Microsoft Azure's Platform as a Service infrastructure and many of Azure's services, including Azure SQL databases, to deliver a reliable, globally available service for your development projects.

::: moniker range="azure-devops" For more information about the steps Microsoft takes to keep your projects in Azure DevOps Services safe, available, secure, and private, see this white paper, Azure DevOps Services Data Protection Overview. ::: moniker-end

Accounts

While the main types of accounts of interest are the user accounts that you add to your organization or project, Azure DevOps supports other types of accounts to perform various operations, which includes the following account types.

::: moniker range="azure-devops"

  • Organization owner: The creator of an Azure DevOps Services organization or assigned owner. To learn who is the organization owner for your organization, see Look up the organization owner.
  • Service accounts: Internal Azure DevOps accounts used to support a specific service, such as Agent Pool Service, PipelinesSDK. For descriptions of service accounts, see Security groups, service accounts, and permissions.
  • Service principals: Internal Azure DevOps accounts to support internal operations.
  • Job agents: Internal accounts used to run specific jobs on a regular schedule.
  • Third party accounts: Accounts that require access to support Web hooks, service connections, or other third-party applications.

::: moniker-end

::: moniker range="< azure-devops"

  • Service accounts: Internal Azure DevOps accounts used to support a specific service, such as Agent Pool Service, PipelinesSDK. For descriptions of service accounts, see Security groups, service accounts, and permissions.
  • Service principals: Internal Azure DevOps accounts to support internal operations.
  • Job agents: Internal accounts used to run specific jobs on a regular schedule.
  • Third party accounts: Accounts that require access to support Web hooks, service connections, or other third-party applications.

::: moniker-end

The most effective means for managing accounts is by adding them to security groups.

Note

The organization owner and members of the Project Collection Administrators group are granted full access to most all features and functions.

Authentication

Authentication verifies an account identity based on the credentials provided when they sign into Azure DevOps. These systems integrate with and rely upon the security features provided by these other systems:

  • Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
  • Microsoft account (MSA)
  • Active Directory (AD)

Azure AD and MSA support cloud authentication. We recommend Azure AD when you need to manage a large group of users. Otherwise, if you have a small user base accessing your organization in Azure DevOps, you can use Microsoft accounts. For more information, see About accessing Azure DevOps with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

For on-premises deployments, AD is recommended when managing a large group of users. For more information, see Set up groups for use in on-premises deployments.

Authentication methods, integrating with other services and apps

Other applications and services can integrate with services and resources in Azure DevOps. To access your account without asking for user credentials multiple times, apps can use the following authentication methods.

By default, your account or collection allows access for all authentication methods. You can limit access, but you must specifically restrict access for each method. When you deny access to an authentication method, no app can use that method to access your account. Any app that previously had access gets an authentication error and can't access your account.

For more information about how we store your credentials, see Credential storage for Azure DevOps.

For more information about how to choose the right authentication mechanism, see Guidance for authentication.

Authorization

Authorization verifies that the identity that is attempting to connect has the necessary permissions to access a service, feature, function, object, or method. Authorization always occurs after successful authentication. If a connection isn't authenticated, it fails before any authorization checking is performed. If authentication of a connection succeeds, a specific action might still be disallowed because the user or group didn't have authorization to perform that action.

Authorization depends on the permissions assigned to the account. Permissions are granted either directly to an account, or through membership in a security group or security role. Access levels and feature flags can also grant or restrict access to a feature. For more information about these authorization methods, see Get started with permissions, access, and security groups.

Security namespaces and permissions

Security namespaces store data that determines the level of access that Azure DevOps accounts have to perform a specific action on a specific resource. Each family of resources, such as work items or Git repositories, is secured through a unique namespace. Each security namespace contains zero or more access control lists (ACLs). Each ACL contains a token, an inherit flag, and a set of zero or more access control entries (ACEs). Each ACE contains an identity descriptor, an allowed permissions bitmask, and a denied permissions bitmask.

For more information, see Security namespaces and permission reference.

Security policies

::: moniker range="azure-devops"

To secure your organization and code, you can set many policies. Specifically, you can enable or disable the following policies:

General

Application connection and security policies

Use the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant policy to restrict creating new organizations to desired users only. This policy is turned off by default and only valid when the organization is connected to Azure Active Directory. Check restrict organization creation for more details.

The following policies determine the access you want to give users and applications to your organizations:

User policies

  • External guest access (Only valid when the organization is connected to Azure Active Directory.): When enabled, invitations can be sent to email accounts of users who aren't members of the tenant Azure Active Directory through the Users page. For more information, see Add external users to your organization.
  • Allow team and project administrators to invite new users: Only valid when the organization is connected to Azure Active Directory. When enabled, team and project administrators can add users through the Users page. For more information, see Restrict new user invitations from Project and Team Administrators.
  • Request access: Only valid when the organization is connected to Azure Active Directory. When enabled, users can request access to a resource. A request results in an email notification to the administrators asking for review and access, as needed. For more information, see Add external users to your organization.
  • Invite GitHub users: Only valid when the organization isn't connected to Azure Active Directory. When enabled, administrators can add users based on their GitHub user accounts from the Users page. For more information, see Authenticating & inviting GitHub users FAQs.

Project-Scoped Users group

By default, users added to an organization can view all organization and project information and settings. This includes viewing list of users, list of projects, billing details, usage data, and more that is accessed through Organization Settings.

[!INCLUDE project-scoped-users-important-note]

To restrict select users, such as Stakeholders, Azure Active Directory guest users, or members of a particular security group, you can enable the Limit user visibility and collaboration to specific projects preview feature for the organization. Once that is enabled, any user or group added to the Project-Scoped Users group, are restricted in the following ways:

  • Can only access the Overview and Projects pages of Organization Settings.
  • Can only connect and view those projects to which they've been added to explicitly (see Add users to a project or team.
  • Can only select user and group identities that have been added explicitly to the project they're connected to.

For more information, see Manage your organization, Limit user visibility for projects and more. To enable the feature, see Manage or enable features.

[!INCLUDE project-scoped-users-warning]

Git repository and branch policies

::: moniker-end

::: moniker range="< azure-devops"

To secure your code, you can set many Git repository and branch policies. For more information, see the following articles.

::: moniker-end

Azure Repos and Azure Pipelines security

Since repositories and build and release pipelines pose unique security challenges, other features beyond the features discussed in this article are employed. For more information, see the following articles.

Next steps

[!div class="nextstepaction"] Permissions and groups reference

Related articles