Microsoft Azure Architect Design (AZ-301) Practice Exam 2026 - Free Azure Architect Practice Questions and Study Guide

The entity responsible for generating the access token in an Azure Active Directory (AD) application architecture is Azure AD. Azure AD acts as the identity provider that authenticates users and issues tokens, including access tokens, to allow secure access to resources. When a user or application needs to access a resource, they first authenticate against Azure AD, which validates their credentials. Upon successful authentication, Azure AD generates an access token containing claims about the user or application, including permissions they have been granted.

This process ensures a secure and centralized method for managing authentication and authorization across various applications and services within the Azure ecosystem. It also helps minimize the need for applications to directly manage sensitive user credentials, relying instead on tokens that can be configured to have specific lifetimes and scopes.

In this context, other entities such as web apps, web APIs, or third-party services may utilize the access tokens provided by Azure AD, but they do not generate these tokens themselves. Their roles generally involve acting on the access tokens once they have been issued, rather than being the source of their creation.