Azure AD app registration identities are used to provide access to specific resources in Azure. We use some App Registrations in Azure, for example, the security concerns, many organisations dislike enabling users to build Azure Active Directory (AAD) and Service Principals (SP). Building a manual process, on the other hand, might be a bottleneck and a time sink.
However, you can build an Office365 form for users to request AAD application registration. Next, you make a Microsoft Flow that will be triggered when the form is submitted and send it to the manager for approval. Finally, build a Logic App that will register the AAD application after the manager has approved it.
Is it really that simple? It certainly is!
When there is no user present, application permission is used, often used for API calls to other APIs. Background services also make use of this. Nevertheless, unlike delegated permissions, application permissions always contain the permissions that the programme has been granted and logs in using the app id and client secret.
Are you looking for out-of-box secret expiry monitoring? Try Serverless360 for free.
It is crucial to always maintain the continuous operation of live applications. But what if you neglect to update the Client Secret key that has expired, and your programme suddenly crashes? Your clients and business will be impacted, and you will receive several letters requesting further action. How simple if you got notified on Azure app registration client secret expiration.
Yes, with Serverless360, it is as simple as you read the above lines!
Key Takeaways
- What is Azure App Registration?
- Importance of App Registration.
- Significance of Certificates and Secrets.
- Monitor the client secrets.
- Azure app registration client secret expiration notification.
Before seeing how Serverless360 simplifies the monitoring, let us take a brief look at Azure app registration.
What is App Registration and its importance?
You and other users can log in using your Azure Active Directory thanks to the application registration in your tenant. Using an application secret for authentication is an additional choice. A default application registration can only verify that the user’s login credentials are genuine on its own.
In the case of a multi-tenant application, this might be your Active Directory or the directory where the user was originally from. The ability to specify the permissions of an application is available during application registration. Each access level inside your Azure tenant grants access to a certain set of individuals or resources.
For instance, the read permission would be sufficient to view the essential details of a user’s profile. In fact, you can limit access to an application to only a particular group of users through app registration, if necessary. A service principal, which is the application’s identity, is connected to an app registration. A service principal has credentials, as you certainly are aware.
Within Microsoft’s robust Identity Platform, applications must be registered to authenticate and authorise. To that purpose, the App registrations in Azure AD provides the option to register applications and give them the appropriate rights.
Applications can be shown in Azure AD in one of two ways:
Application objects: It defines the application for Azure AD and can be considered the application’s specification. This makes it possible for the service to comprehend how to grant the application’s tokens according to its settings.
Service principals: The application instances that manage connections to Azure AD are in the user’s directory.
A trust connection is created when you construct an application between the defined application and the Microsoft Identity Platform. Keep in mind that the trust is exclusively one-way—that is, the application only has faith in Microsoft, not the other way around. The following facts of Azure Apps are within your control.
- Supported Account Types: Indicates if your application can be used with personal Microsoft accounts in addition to those belonging to a specific organisational directory.
- The Redirect settings: If the app needs the access token to be returned to a specified URI to proceed with the next stage of authentication and authorization, use the redirect settings.
- Using certificates and secrets, you may confirm that an application is authorised to connect to the Azure Identity platform.
- Permissions: When you wish to use the currently logged-on user to authenticate to an API or other services, you use delegated permissions. Application permissions are used when there is no user present.
Significance of Certificates and Secrets
After creating a new Azure App Registration, the next steps would be to properly configure certificates/secrets, API permissions, Branding, and Ownership.
You need a mechanism to verify that incoming requests are coming from a reputable programme, just like with any authentication process. You can create a new client secret that can be used throughout the authentication process, or you can upload an externally created certificate that can be used to validate the application in the Certificates & Secrets area. With client secrets, you can select a secret’s validity period as 1 year, 2 years, or indefinitely.
For instance, in Logic App flows, you may use some App Registrations on Azure. We can utilise client secrets to authenticate with these App Registrations. But occasionally, these client secrets expire, and if you do not replace them before the expiration date, the flows will stop operating. You would like to receive a notification a few weeks before one of these secrets expires, but there is no ready-made answer to this problem.
Obviously, a secret that expires could seriously impact your working applications. So, how can you monitor the expiration of your client secrets?
If you are utilising Serverless360, you do not give it a second thought.
Get Proactive alerts on Azure App registration client secret expiration
The preferred method for receiving alerts about expiring credentials has been to build custom solutions utilising complex code and multiple Azure services. This is because no features are provided by the native Azure monitoring tools to address the need for such App registration credential expiry monitoring.
But if you are on the Azure Operations team, you will have to rely significantly on developers if you use the bespoke solution because it entails too many manual chores and could be error-prone.
To address this significant shortcoming, Serverless360 has offered a way to keep track of the expiration dates of credentials linked to App registrations. Here is what it is now able to do:
- Easily manage and keep an eye on any number of credentials.
- Prior to a client secret or credential expiring, receive intelligent alerts.
- Get to be notified by email.
- View the details of your Azure App registrations, including their characteristics and credentials.
- You can choose how long before the credential expires you will be notified.
Monitoring client secrets
Client secrets for particular app registrations can expire, and Serverless360 allows customers the ability to keep track of when they will and will not by sending alerts before the expiration date to remind them to renew it. As mentioned before, Serverless360 offers a rapid configuration step with zero code.
To indicate how many days before the expiration alert must be sent, go to the Monitoring section of the resource, provide the number of days, and hit the save button.
Tadaa… that is it, the configuration is done.
Before the expected date, you will receive a notification email alert from Serverless360.
Properties
To avoid switching to the Azure portal, you can view the properties as well. Using the Properties option, users may see the properties of each resource used for app registration.
Wrap-up
You can utilise Azure Automation, a great service, for a variety of management chores. With the service of Serverless360, you get notified on Azure app registration client secret expiration! This way, we can act on them and decide whether to renew these credentials.
Do you want to benefit from this, and many others features of Serverless360? You can sign-up for a no-obligation free trial.
Also, our experienced Product consultant team would love to show you the product, discuss your challenges concerning operations and monitoring of your Azure Serverless components, and understand if Serverless360 would be a good fit.
