How Azure Protects Your Mobile App

Frequently asked questions

Why shouldn't a mobile app connect directly to a database?

A direct line from app to database is also the entire attack surface — no token, no owner check, and (if reachable) a public endpoint an attacker can scan and query. Front Door with WAF, your own API, Microsoft Entra ID and a private endpoint each answer a different question, and removing any one of them removes what the others assumed was already handled.

What's the difference between authentication and authorization here?

Authentication (Entra ID) proves who is calling. Authorization is a separate check your API still has to make — deciding that a signed-in user only sees their own rows, typically a WHERE clause rather than middleware. Skipping it is broken object level authorization, OWASP API Security's #1 issue.

Read deeper on Azure

Twenty seconds gets the shape of an idea across. These go into how it behaves in production.

• How Azure Protects a Mobile App: The Full Request Flow, Layer by Layer

  Front Door, your API, Microsoft Entra ID, authorization and a private database — the five layers that stand between a mobile app and its data on Azure.

• AI Bot Attacks on a Mobile App Login, and How Azure Stops Them

  A script tries 8,000 passwords a minute against your login API at 3am. Rate limiting, smart lockout and Defender for Cloud make speed the losing move.

• Azure Key Vault Explained: The One Secret Tutorials Never Remove

  Moving every secret into Key Vault leaves exactly one behind: the credential that opens the vault. A managed identity is what removes it.