Authentication best practices
The single most important part of your application is its security. No matter how good the user experience might be, if your application isn't secure a hacker can ruin it.
The following are some tips to keep your Azure Maps application secure. When using Azure, be sure to familiarize yourself with the security tools available to you. For more information, See the introduction to Azure security.
Understanding security threats
Hackers gaining access to your account could potentially make unlimited billable transactions, resulting in unexpected costs and decreased performance due to QPS limits.
When considering best practices for securing your Azure Maps applications, you need to understand the different authentication options available.
Authentication best practices in Azure Maps
When creating publicly facing client applications with Azure Maps, you must ensure that your authentication secrets aren't publicly accessible.
Subscription key-based authentication (Shared Key) can be used in either client side applications or web services, however it's the least secure approach to securing your application or web service. The reason is the key is easily obtained from an HTTP request and grants access to all Azure Maps REST API available in the SKU (Pricing Tier). If you do use subscription keys, be sure to rotate them regularly and keep in mind that Shared Key doesn't allow for configurable lifetime, it must be done manually. You should also consider using Shared Key authentication with Azure Key Vault, which enables you to securely store your secret in Azure.
If using Microsoft Entra authentication or Shared Access Signature (SAS) Token authentication, access to Azure Maps REST APIs is authorized using role-based access control (RBAC). RBAC enables you to control what access is given to the issued tokens. You should consider how long access should be granted for the tokens. Unlike Shared Key authentication, the lifetime of these tokens is configurable.
Tip
For more information on configuring token lifetimes, see:
Public client and confidential client applications
There are different security concerns between public and confidential client applications. For more information about what is considered a public versus confidential client application, see Public client and confidential client applications in the Microsoft identity platform documentation.
Public client applications
For apps that run on devices or desktop computers or in a web browser, you should consider defining which domains have access to your Azure Map account using Cross origin resource sharing (CORS). CORS instructs the clients' browser on which origins such as "https://microsoft.com" are allowed to request resources for the Azure Map account.
Note
If you're developing a web server or service, your Azure Maps account does not need to be configured with CORS. If you have JavaScript code in the client side web application, CORS does apply.
Confidential client applications
For apps that run on servers (such as web services and service/daemon apps), if you prefer to avoid the overhead and complexity of managing secrets, consider Managed Identities. Managed identities can provide an identity for your web service to use when connecting to Azure Maps using Microsoft Entra authentication. If so, your web service uses that identity to obtain the required Microsoft Entra tokens. You should use Azure RBAC to configure what access the web service is given, using the Least privileged roles possible.
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