From the course: Windows 10: Security

Overview of authentication and accounts - Windows Tutorial

From the course: Windows 10: Security

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Overview of authentication and accounts

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- [Instructor] In this section, we're going to talk about authentication and how it relates to security in Windows 10. Authentication is defined as confirming the truth of a single piece of data. In relation to security, that basically means verifying that you are who you say you are. So if you walk up to a computer and claim that you are the administrator of that computer, the computer is not just going to take your word for it. It's going to require that you prove somehow that you are the administrator. And typically this happens with passwords. In all versions of Windows, authentication is tied to accounts. An account is an entity that should be controlled by a single user. An account is attached to permissions. Or we can say that permissions are attached to accounts. But basically an account has the permission to read certain files, write certain files. It might be denied permission to do certain things. And in order to maintain security, every account needs to be authenticated in some way. Again, typically a password. Windows 10 supports four main types of accounts. We'll start with the local account that exists only on the local computer. And that is perfectly fine if you only have one computer. It could make things like sharing files over the network more difficult. So if you have multiple computers, then local accounts may not be the best option. The next option is a Microsoft account. And that is an account that can be used on your local computer, and also used on the Microsoft website. You could then take that Microsoft account and log into a different Windows 10 PC, and possibly get some file sharing that way. Next is a domain account, which is an account on a Microsoft Windows Active Directory domain. And that's the way to go for a large enterprise if you have hundreds or thousands of computers. And the last one is an Azure account. Azure is the cloud offering from Microsoft. Azure can do lots of different things, but one of them is it can store accounts and provide authentication for those accounts.

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