Referencing security principals

  • Article

Applies to: ✅ Azure Data Explorer

The authorization model allows for the use of Microsoft Entra user and application identities and Microsoft Accounts (MSAs) as security principals. This article provides an overview of the supported principal types for both Microsoft Entra ID and MSAs, and demonstrates how to properly reference these principals when assigning security roles using management commands.

Microsoft Entra ID

The recommended way to access your environment is by authenticating to the Microsoft Entra service. Microsoft Entra ID is an identity provider capable of authenticating security principals and coordinating with other identity providers, such as Microsoft's Active Directory.

Microsoft Entra ID supports the following authentication scenarios:

  • User authentication (interactive sign-in): Used to authenticate human principals.
  • Application authentication (non-interactive sign-in): Used to authenticate services and applications that have to run or authenticate without user interaction.

Note

  • Microsoft Entra ID does not allow authentication of service accounts that are by definition on-premises AD entities. The Microsoft Entra equivalent of an AD service account is the Microsoft Entra application.
  • Only supports Security Group (SG) principals and not Distribution Group (DG) principals are supported. An attempt to set up access for a DG will result in an error.

Referencing Microsoft Entra principals and groups

The syntax for referencing Microsoft Entra user and application principals and groups is outlined in the following table.

If you use a User Principal Name (UPN) to reference a user principal, and an attempt will be made to infer the tenant from the domain name and try to find the principal. If the principal isn't found, explicitly specify the tenant ID or name in addition to the user's UPN or object ID.

Similarly, you can reference a security group with the group email address in UPN format and an attempt will be made to infer the tenant from the domain name. If the group isn't found, explicitly specify the tenant ID or name in addition to the group display name or object ID.

Type of Entity Microsoft Entra tenant Syntax
User Implicit aaduser=UPN
User Explicit (ID) aaduser=UPN;TenantId
or
aaduser=ObjectID;TenantId
User Explicit (Name) aaduser=UPN;TenantName
or
aaduser=ObjectID;TenantName
Group Implicit aadgroup=GroupEmailAddress
Group Explicit (ID) aadgroup=GroupDisplayName;TenantId
or
aadgroup=GroupObjectId;TenantId
Group Explicit (Name) aadgroup=GroupDisplayName;TenantName
or
aadgroup=GroupObjectId;TenantName
App Explicit (ID) aadapp=ApplicationDisplayName;TenantId
or
aadapp=ApplicationId;TenantId
App Explicit (Name) aadapp=ApplicationDisplayName;TenantName
or
aadapp=ApplicationId;TenantName

Note

Use the "App" format to reference managed identities, in which the ApplicationId is the managed identity object ID or managed identity client (application) ID.

Examples

The following example uses the user UPN to define a principal the user role on the Test database. The tenant information isn't specified, so your cluster will attempt to resolve the Microsoft Entra tenant using the UPN.

.add database Test users ('aaduser=imikeoein@fabrikam.com') 'Test user (AAD)'

The following example uses a group name and tenant name to assign the group to the user role on the Test database.

.add database Test users ('aadgroup=SGDisplayName;fabrikam.com') 'Test group @fabrikam.com (AAD)'

The following example uses an app ID and tenant name to assign the app the user role on the Test database.

.add database Test users ('aadapp=4c7e82bd-6adb-46c3-b413-fdd44834c69b;fabrikam.com') 'Test app @fabrikam.com (AAD)'

Microsoft Accounts (MSAs)

User authentication for Microsoft Accounts (MSAs) is supported. MSAs are all of the Microsoft-managed non-organizational user accounts. For example, hotmail.com, live.com, outlook.com.

Referencing MSA principals

IdP Type Syntax
Live.com User msauser=UPN

Example

The following example assigns an MSA user to the user role on the Test database.

.add database Test users ('msauser=abbiatkins@live.com') 'Test user (live.com)'

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