An Azure geography is a defined area of the world that contains at least one Azure Region. An Azure region is an area within a geography, containing one or more datacenters.

• Azure AD/RBAC authorization is preferred over all other authorization storage options for Azure Storage.

• Authorize access to data in Azure Storage
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-network-security
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/storage-security/4-shared-access-signatures
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-sas-overview
• Azure AD is the recommended way to provide authorization for storage account access.

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/authorize-data-access#understand-authorization-for-data-operations

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) integration/RBAC
  • This is the generally recommend method to use
  • You can grant permissions that are scoped to the level of an individual container or queue.
• Shared Key for blobs, files, queues, and tables. A client using Shared Key passes a header with every request that is signed using the storage account access key.
  • It is recommended to disable and not use this option.
  • MS recommends using Azure AD/RBAC instead of this option
  • If shared keys are used it is recommended to use Azure Key vault and to rotate keys periodically.
• Shared Access Signature (SAS)

• SAS is a string that contains a security token that can be attached to a URI that gives access to storage objects
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-sas-overview

• The only way to revoke a SAS (that was signed by a key) is to revoke (regenerate) the access key that was used to sign it. This is not ideal because that key could be used in other ways and this would be a disruptive operation. That is where a stored access policy can be of use (for service-level SAS only).
• There are tree types of SAS, user delegated, service SAS and account SAS.
• A user delegation SAS is secured with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) credentials and also by the permissions specified for the SAS. A user delegation SAS applies to Blob storage only.
• A service SAS is secured with the storage account key. A service SAS delegates access to a resource in only one of the Azure Storage services: Blob storage, Queue storage, Table storage, or Azure Files. A service-level SAS applies to just one service (e.g. blob, Azure Files…).
• An account SAS is secured with the storage account key. An account SAS delegates access to resources in one or more of the storage services. All of the operations available via a service or user delegation SAS are also available via an account SAS. Account-level SAS applies to the Storage Account, therefore it could apply to any number of containers/Azure Storage Services in the account.

• A SAS can take one of two forms. Ad hoc SAS where the expiry and permissions are part of the SAS URI and Service SAS with stored access policy where the SAS references the policy that defines the expiry and permissions.
  • A user delegated SAS and account SAS must be an ad hoc SAS

A stored access policy provides an additional level of control over service-level shared access signatures (SAS) on the server side.

* A stored access policy is an additional level of protection that can be used in conjunction with service-level shared access signatures (SAS) authentication. It provides and expiration date and permissions that can be used independent of the SAS token/URL. This provides more flexibility for revoking access.

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/define-stored-access-policy

• All data (including metadata) written to Azure Storage is automatically encrypted using Storage Service Encryption (SSE).
• You can rely on Microsoft-managed keys for the encryption of your storage account, or you can manage encryption with your own keys.

• ACLs are preserved by default, you are not required to enable identity-based authentication on your storage account to preserve ACLs.
• Secure Transfer Required should be enabled for storage accounts.