We are pleased to announce the general availability of token authentication with Azure CDN. This feature is available in the Azure CDN from Verizon Premium offering. We have enabled the feature for all new and existing Verizon Premium customers.
Token-based authentication is a great tool to handle authentication for multiple users. It scales easily and provides security. Main benefits of token authentication include:
- Easily scalable, no need to store user login information on the server.
- Mobile application ready solution.
- Provides security, each request must contain the token and after the token expires user needs to login again.
- Prevents attacks such as cross-site request forgery (CSRF, also known as session riding).
By enabling this feature on CDN, each requests will be authenticated by CDN edge POPs before delivering the content which prevents Azure CDN from serving assets to unauthorized users. This is typically done to prevent hotlinking of content, where a different website, often a message board, uses your assets without permission. This can have an impact on your content delivery costs.
Please read the full feature documentation to learn how to set up token authentication today!
More Information
Is there a feature you'd like to see in Azure CDN? Give us feedback!