AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Exam
Are you a guardian of your domain? Lean how to leverage your aptitude in security to protect Microsoft Azure technologies, with a goal of earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate certification!
Practice Test
Expert
Practice Test
Expert
Manage access to Azure Container Registry
Configure Azure AD Authentication and Role-Based Access Control
Azure Container Registry (ACR) integrates with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to provide identity-based access control for container images. You can assign service principals and managed identities to built-in or custom ACR roles, ensuring each identity has only the permissions it needs. This approach follows the principle of least privilege, reducing the risk of overpermissioned accounts. By centralizing access through Azure AD, you also simplify user management and improve security oversight.
When granting roles, you must choose the scope at which the permissions apply. You can assign access at the subscription level to cover all registries in that subscription, at the resource group level for all registries in a group, or at the registry level to target a single ACR instance. Proper scoping prevents identities from having unnecessary global access and aligns permissions with real business needs. If the built-in roles do not fit your requirements, you can create custom roles to fine-tune the exact set of actions an identity can perform.
For more granular control, ACR supports repository-scoped permissions. This feature lets you restrict actions to specific container repositories by issuing tokens. Tokens can be configured with permissions for:
- push (uploading images)
- pull (downloading images)
- delete (removing images)
Using these tokens enforces end-to-end least privilege and ensures identities only perform the operations they truly require.
To maintain a secure environment, it’s crucial to enable audit logs and monitor all registry activities. You can use Azure Monitor or Event Grid to collect logs for every push, pull, and delete action. Regularly review these logs to detect unusual patterns and verify that role assignments still match your security policies. Continuous monitoring and periodic access reviews help you uphold a strong security posture in your container environment.
Conclusion
In this section, we learned how ACR uses Azure AD for centralized, identity-based access control. Assigning service principals and managed identities to ACR roles at the correct scope—subscription, resource group, or registry—ensures adherence to the principle of least privilege. We also saw how custom roles can fill gaps when built-in roles are not specific enough.
The concept of repository-scoped permissions and token-based authentication lets you restrict operations like push, pull, and delete to only the necessary identities. This fine-grained approach further enforces least-privilege access and helps maintain a clear security model. Finally, enabling detailed audit logs and leveraging Azure Monitor or Event Grid ensures you have the visibility to detect anomalies and validate that your access controls remain effective over time.
By combining Azure AD role assignments, scoped permissions, token-based controls, and continuous monitoring, you can manage access to Azure Container Registry in a secure, scalable, and auditable way.