What is an Azure Managed Identity (and the AWS equivalent for workloads)?
Options
- An identity Azure manages so apps reach services without stored secrets (Correct option)
- A user account for humans that signs in with a password
- A type of virtual network that connects two subscriptions
- A backup policy that protects the keys of a subscription
Answer
An identity automatically managed by Azure that an app uses to access other Azure services without storing passwords or keys; AWS uses IAM roles for the same goal
Why
Hard-coded secrets are a leading cause of breaches. With a managed identity, the resource (VM, App Service, AKS pod) gets an identity in Entra ID and requests short-lived tokens automatically. You grant that identity permissions (for example read access to a Key Vault or Blob container) through Azure RBAC.
No password or connection string exists in code or config to leak or rotate.
AWS: attach an IAM role to the EC2 instance, ECS task or Lambda function.
Remember
Managed identity / IAM role = credentials without secrets.