How does a user authenticate to the cloud?
According toJaap Wesselius),
In Office 365 there are multiple ways for users to authenticate, and this is related to the type of identity being used:
Cloud Identity – is created in the cloud, password lives in the cloud and user authenticates in the cloud.
Synced Identity – is create in on-premises Active Directory and is synchronized to the cloud, including its password (most of the times). User authenticates in the cloud with on-premises password.
Federated Identity – is created in on-premises Active Directory and is synchronized to the cloud, sometimes including its password (recommended for disaster recovery). User authenticates against on-premises Domain Controllers using federation infrastructure (ADFS).
I am visual guy so here is the Mermaid graph.
graph TD subgraph Cloud Identity CI_User[User with Cloud Identity] CI_PW[Password in Cloud] CI_Auth[Authentication in Cloud] CI_User --> CI_PW CI_PW --> CI_Auth end subgraph Synced Identity SI_User[User with Synced Identity] SI_OnPrem[On-Premises AD] SI_Sync[Password Sync to Cloud] SI_Auth[Authentication in Cloud with On-Premises Password] SI_User --> SI_OnPrem SI_OnPrem --> SI_Sync SI_Sync --> SI_Auth end subgraph Federated Identity FI_User[User with Federated Identity] FI_OnPrem[On-Premises AD] FI_Federation[Authentication via ADFS Federation Infrastructure] FI_DC[On-Premises Domain Controller] FI_User --> FI_OnPrem FI_OnPrem --> FI_Federation FI_Federation --> FI_DC end