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About security, authentication, and authorization

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Azure DevOps Server 2019

Azure DevOps employs various security concepts to ensure that only authorized users can access features, functions, and data. Users gain access to Azure DevOps through the authentication of their security credentials and the authorization of their account entitlements. The combination of both determine the user's access to specific features or functions.

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

Account types

  • Users
  • Service accounts
  • Service principals or managed identities
  • Job agents

Authentication

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

Authorization

  • Security group membership
  • Role-based permissions
  • Access levels
  • Feature flags
  • Security namespaces & permissions

Policies

  • Git repository and branch policies

Important

Azure DevOps doesn't support Alternate Credentials authentication. If you're still using Alternate Credentials, we strongly encourage you to switch to a more secure authentication method.

Both Azure DevOps Services (cloud) and Azure DevOps Server (on-premises) support software development from planning to deployment. Each platform leverages Microsoft Azure's Platform as a Service infrastructure and services, including Azure SQL databases, to provide a reliable, globally available service for your projects.

Accounts

While human user accounts are the primary focus, Azure DevOps also supports various other account types for different operations:

  • Service accounts: Internal Azure DevOps organization 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 or managed identities: Microsoft Entra applications or managed identities added to your organization to perform actions on behalf of a third-party application. Some service principals refer to internal Azure DevOps organization 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.

The most effective way to manage 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 nearly all features and functions.

Authentication

Authentication verifies an account's identity based on the credentials provided during sign-in to Azure DevOps. These systems integrate with and rely on the security features of the following other systems:

  • Microsoft Entra ID
  • Microsoft account (MSA)
  • Active Directory (AD)

Microsoft Entra ID and MSA support cloud authentication. We recommend using Microsoft Entra ID for managing a large group of users. For a small user base accessing your Azure DevOps organization, Microsoft accounts are sufficient. For more information, see About accessing Azure DevOps with Microsoft Entra ID.

For on-premises deployments, AD is recommended for 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 Azure DevOps. To access your account without repeatedly asking for user credentials, apps can use the following authentication methods:

  • OAuth to generate tokens on users' behalf for accessing REST APIs.

    • There are two OAuth app models available: Azure DevOps OAuth is planned for deprecation in 2026. Use Microsoft Entra OAuth to build on-behalf-of user apps.
    • You can also generate Microsoft Entra tokens for ad-hoc operations on your own behalf, for accessing resources like builds or work items or accessing Azure DevOps REST APIs.

  • Service principals or managed identities to generate Microsoft Entra tokens on behalf of an application or service, typically automating workflows that need to access Azure DevOps resources. Most actions traditionally performed by a service account and a PAT can be done using a service principal or managed identity.

  • Personal access tokens (PATs) to generate tokens on your behalf. PATs might be helpful for clients like Xcode and NuGet that don't support Microsoft accounts or features, like multifactor authentication (MFA).

  • SSH authentication to generate encryption keys for yourself when you use Linux, macOS, or Windows running Git for Windows and can't use Git credential managers or PATs for HTTPS authentication.

By default, your account or collection allows access for all authentication methods. You can limit access by specifically restricting 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 receives an authentication error and can't access your account.

For more information, see the following articles:

Authorization

Authorization verifies that the identity 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 checks are performed. Even if authentication succeeds, a specific action might still be disallowed if the user or group lacks authorization.

Authorization depends on the permissions assigned to the user, either directly or through membership in a security group or security role. Access levels and feature flags can also manage access to specific features. For more information about these authorization methods, see Get started with permissions, access, and security groups.

Security namespaces and permissions

Security namespaces determine user access levels for specific actions on resources.

  • Each resource family, such as work items or Git repositories, has a unique namespace.
  • Each namespace contains zero or more access control lists (ACLs).
    • Each ACL includes a token, an inherit flag, and access control entries (ACEs).
    • Each ACE has an identity descriptor, an allowed permissions bitmask, and a denied permissions bitmask.

For more information, see Security namespaces and permission reference.

Security policies

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

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

Permissions and groups reference