Access Control Service, or

Windows Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

Access Control Service (ACS) was a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

-owned cloud-based service that provided an easy way of authenticating and authorizing users to gain access to

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

s and services while allowing the features of

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an Logical assertion, assertion, such as the Digital identity, identity of a computer system user. In contrast with iden ...

and authorization to be factored out of the

application code This glossary of computer science is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in computer science, its sub-disciplines, and related fields, including terms relevant to software, data science, and . A ...

. This facilitates application development while at the same time providing users the benefit of being able to log into multiple applications with a reduced number of authentications, and in some cases only one authentication. The system provides an authorization store that can be accessed programmatically as well as via a

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

portal. Once authorizations are configured, a user coming to an application via ACS arrives at the application entrance with not only an authentication token, but also a set of authorization claims attached to the token. ACS was retired by Microsoft on November 7, 2018.

Features

ACS has the following features * Integration with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) * Support for the SAML 1.1,

SAML 2.0 Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 is a version of the Security Assertion Markup Language, SAML standard for exchanging authentication and authorization identities between security domains. SAML 2.0 is an XML-based communications ...

, Simple Web Token (SWT) and

JSON Web Token JSON Web Token (JWT, suggested pronunciation , same as the word "jot") is a Internet Standard#Proposed Standard, proposed Internet standard for creating data with optional Signature (cryptography), signature and/or optional encryption whose Payl ...

(JWT) token formats (JWT still in beta) * Integrated and customizable Home Realm Discovery that allows users to choose their identity provider * A browser-based management portal that allows administrative access to the ACS configuration

References

Authentication methods Access control software {{Windows-software-stub

Features

See also

References