Adding Managed Identity to security group is adding Service Principle

Question

When I add the Microsoft Purview managed identity from the Azure portal to a security group, is it effectively the same as adding a service principal to that security group?

Answer 1

To a large extent - aside from the differences between managed identities and service principals. In particular:

• Both managed identities and service principals can be granted role-based access (RBAC) permissions to resources (such as Azure Blob Storage) by adding them to security groups and assigning roles.
• The critical distinction lies in their usage:
  • Managed identities are tied to specific Azure resources.
  • Service principals are typically used by applications and require you to manage the credentials (e.g., client secrets or certificates).

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hth

Marcin