What is Azure Managed Identity?

A Managed Identity is an automatically managed identity in Azure AD that allows Azure services (VMs, App Service, Functions, AKS pods) to authenticate to other Azure services without managing credentials. Two types: System-assigned: created and tied to a specific resource; automatically deleted when the resource is deleted. User-assigned: created as a standalone resource and can be assigned to multiple services. Usage: enable Managed Identity on a VM, grant it access to Key Vault secrets, and the VM can retrieve secrets using the Azure SDK without any credentials in code — Azure handles token acquisition transparently. Managed Identities eliminate the #1 security risk: hardcoded or improperly stored service credentials.