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Add authentication and manage user identities in your mobile apps

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Having a view of the user and their behavior across your application empowers developers to better engage users by creating tailored experiences for them. Whether you're an application developer who is building a collaboration application for users inside your organization or you're creating the next social network platform, you need a way to authenticate users and manage user identities. An identity management service is one of the most important features of a mobile back-end service.

Use the following services to enable user authentication in your mobile apps.

Azure Active Directory B2C

Azure AD B2C is a business-to-consumer (B2C) identity management service that developers can use to authenticate their customers. This white-label service lets developers customize and control how users securely interact with their web, desktop, mobile, or single-page applications. Using Azure AD B2C, users can sign up, sign in, reset passwords, and edit profiles. Azure AD B2C implements a form of the OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 protocols.

Azure Active Directory B2C features

  • Securely authenticate customers with their preferred identity provider.
  • Manage customer identity and access.
  • Gain sign-in support for social media such as Facebook, GitHub, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, WeChat, and Weibo.
  • Connect to your user accounts by using industry standard protocols, such as OpenID Connect or SAML, to make identity management possible on a variety of platforms.
  • Provide branded registration and sign-in experiences.
  • Easily integrate with CRM databases, marketing analytics tools, and account verification systems.
  • Capture sign-in, preference, and conversion data for customers.

Azure Active Directory B2C references

Microsoft Entra ID

Microsoft Entra ID is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service, which helps your employees to sign in and gain access to:

  • External resources, such as Microsoft 365, the Azure portal, and thousands of other software as a service (SaaS) applications.
  • Internal resources, such as apps on your corporate network and intranet, along with any cloud apps developed by your own organization.

Microsoft Entra features

  • Seamless, highly secure access by connecting users to the applications they need.
  • Comprehensive identity protection and enhanced security for identities and access based on user, location, device, data, and application context.
  • Thousands of pre-integrated apps for both commercial and custom applications, such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce.com, and Box.
  • Ability to manage access at scale.

Microsoft Entra ID references