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Use Managed Identity for Azure AI services accounts#

Security · Azure AI · Rule · 2022_09 · Important

Configure managed identities to access Azure resources.

Description#

Azure AI services (previously known as Cognitive Services) must authenticate to Azure resources such storage accounts. To authenticate to Azure resources, Azure AI can use managed identities.

Using Azure managed identities have the following benefits:

  • You don't need to store or manage credentials. Azure automatically generates tokens and performs rotation.
  • You can use managed identities to authenticate to any Azure service that supports Entra ID (previously Azure AD) authentication.
  • Managed identities can be used without any additional cost.

Recommendation#

Consider configuring a managed identity for each Azure AI services account.

Examples#

Configure with Azure template#

To deploy accounts that pass this rule:

  • Set the identity.type to SystemAssigned or UserAssigned.
  • If identity.type is UserAssigned, reference the identity with identity.userAssignedIdentities.

For example:

Azure Template snippet
{
  "type": "Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts",
  "apiVersion": "2023-05-01",
  "name": "[parameters('name')]",
  "location": "[parameters('location')]",
  "identity": {
    "type": "SystemAssigned"
  },
  "sku": {
    "name": "S0"
  },
  "kind": "TextAnalytics",
  "properties": {
    "publicNetworkAccess": "Disabled",
    "networkAcls": {
      "defaultAction": "Deny"
    },
    "disableLocalAuth": true
  }
}

Configure with Bicep#

To deploy accounts that pass this rule:

  • Set the identity.type to SystemAssigned or UserAssigned.
  • If identity.type is UserAssigned, reference the identity with identity.userAssignedIdentities.

For example:

Azure Bicep snippet
resource language 'Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts@2023-05-01' = {
  name: name
  location: location
  identity: {
    type: 'SystemAssigned'
  }
  sku: {
    name: 'S0'
  }
  kind: 'TextAnalytics'
  properties: {
    publicNetworkAccess: 'Disabled'
    networkAcls: {
      defaultAction: 'Deny'
    }
    disableLocalAuth: true
  }
}

Configure with Azure Policy#

To address this issue at runtime use the following policies:

Notes#

Configuration of additional Azure resources is not required for all Azure AI services. This rule will run for the following Azure AI services:

  • TextAnalytics - Language service.

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