This course is designed to give you a complete and practical understanding of OAuth2, JWT, and Azure Active Directory authentication, starting from the simplest foundational concepts and gradually moving toward real-world implementations. Whether you are a beginner who has never worked with authentication before, or a developer looking to strengthen your understanding of secure login flows and API protection, this course will walk you through every step using clear explanations and hands-on demos.
Modern applications depend heavily on secure identity and access management. Azure Active Directory and OAuth2 provide industry-standard authentication and authorization mechanisms for web applications, APIs, and service-to-service communication. However, these topics can often feel complicated and confusing. In this course, everything is explained in simple words and demonstrated with real projects so you can confidently apply what you learn in your own applications.
You will begin by learning the fundamentals: what OAuth2 is, how it works, and why it is used. You will then explore JWT tokens in detail, understanding how they are generated, what they contain, and how they are validated. From there, you will learn how Azure AD tenants work, how identity objects are created, and how users, apps, and groups are managed.
Once the foundational concepts are clear, the course transitions into hands-on implementation using ASP.NET Core. You will build a full web application in Visual Studio, configure Azure AD authentication, and debug the login flow to inspect the JWT token and user claims. You will also learn how optional claims work and how to add additional information to tokens. A major focus of this course is the difference between authentication and authorization, including how role-based access control works in Azure AD. You will not only learn the steps involved in enabling roles but also implement role-based authorization inside your ASP.NET Core application.
You will then move into Web API authentication. The course covers how OAuth2 protects APIs, how access tokens are validated, and how Azure AD integrates with backend services. You will create an ASP.NET Core Web API project, configure Azure AD authentication for APIs, and generate JWT tokens for calling APIs from tools like Postman.
Finally, the course covers service-to-service authentication, also known as machine-to-machine API calls. You will learn what service-to-service authentication is, why it is needed, and how it works in Azure AD. You will create a dedicated project for service-to-service API authentication, configure Azure AD protection, generate the necessary tokens, and call the secured API in a real-world scenario.
