What is Microsoft Authentication Broker & where to use it?

Between Microsoft battling FTC for the right to buy Activision-Blizzard, July has been a month of changes for the Redmond-based tech giant. Microsoft Inspire 2023, which happened last week, also brought forward a lot of new products, partnerships, and updates from Microsoft.

We’re seeing AI in almost everything Microsoft-related, from Microsoft Store to Microsoft Teams and Windows 11. It’s safe to say AI is slowly changing everything.

On another side of changes, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) changed its name to Entra, or specifically Microsoft Entra ID. And along with it, while there isn’t any change coming to the platform, some of the features’ names might confuse some people.

There is one feature, specifically, which causes a lot of confusion. We’re talking about the Microsoft Authentication Broker feature which is present on the platform. One user, for example, found out that Microsoft Authentication Broker bypasses Multi-Factor Authentication. So what is Microsoft Authentication Broker?

What is Microsoft Authentication Broker?

Basically, Microsoft Authentication Broker is a token broker service that is used to enable SSOs, which is Single Sign-On. With the Single Sign-on option, you can practically log in to several related but independent software applications with a single ID.

Single Sign-on is the opposite of Multi-factor Authentication, that sort of authentication that requires you to take several steps to log in to an app.

And these Single Sign-ons are sometimes enabled by Microsoft Authentication Broker. You can find it on different devices such as:

• Windows 10/11 devices: they have it built into the OS
• Android devices use Microsoft Authenticator or Microsoft Company Portal
• IOS/IpadOS uses Microsoft Authenticator
• MacOS uses Company Portal with the MacSSO extension deployed

Microsoft Authentication Broker is used in Microsoft platforms, including Entra. It acts like an authority that certificates and validates the authentication of clients, including users and services.

What do you think about it? Is Multi-factor authentication preferable to it or not? Let us know in the comments section below.