While connection strings, tokens, client secrets, and username/password combos are easy to use, using them may be too easy. In a world where tokens get leaked almost daily, you DO NOT want to be the person who leaked it by committing to source control, just posting a picture of yourself online with a password plainly behind you on a post-it note, or some other accident.

Azure Managed Identities change how you authenticate to other Azure services. By abstracting the authentication token away, you and your application never see a token value. Remember, you can't lose what you don't have.

Let's explore Azure Managed Identities and see how easy they are to use in our codebase. We'll also update an application to convert it from using connection strings to using a Managed Identity for all authentications.