Authentication is the process of establishing the identity of a person, service, or device. It requires the person, service, or device to provide some type of credential to prove who they are. Authentication is like presenting ID when you’re traveling. It doesn’t confirm that you’re ticketed, it just proves that you’re who you say you are. Azure supports multiple authentication methods, including standard passwords, single sign-on (SSO), multifactor authentication (MFA), and passwordless.

For the longest time, security and convenience seemed to be at odds with each other. Thankfully, new authentication solutions provide both security and convenience.

The following diagram shows the security level compared to the convenience. Notice Passwordless authentication is high security and high convenience while passwords on their own are low security but high convenience