Security with API: OAuth, token-based access vs key-based access

Let’s consider security with APIs, i.e how to securely identify the caller.

There are two authentication methods quite popular in the cloud to secure APIs:

1. Key-based access
2. OAuth, or token-based access in general

Let’s compare them.

Key-Based

By key-based we mean...

Azure Functions HTTP – Authorization Levels

In a past article, we looked at Serverless compute in Azure in general and Azure Functions specifically.

In this article we wanted to focus on Azure Function triggered by HTTP requests and the different options we have to authenticate:

• Anonymous
• Function
• Admin
• System
• User

Those are...

Serverless compute with Azure Functions - Getting Started

I meant to write about Azure Functions & serverless computing for quite a while now.  So here we go.

This entry is meant as a “getting started” entry with pointers to documentation and general discussion.  We’ll dive deeper in future articles.

Serverless

What is serverless computing?

Using Application Gateway with VNET peering

As I write these lines (early November 2017), Application Gateway doesn’t integrate well across VNET peering.

More precisely, if we put the gateway in a VNET and have scale sets in another, the usual integration, where the scale set registers its VM automatically as the size of the set...

Disaster Recovery with VM Scale Sets & Geo-Replicated DBs

Last year we posted an article about different options available in Azure to implement a disaster recovery strategy.

We strongly suggest to review that article as it gives good insights about what a disaster recovery strategy is within an already resilient Cloud Environment but also clear out a...