Access Control Service - Deprecated Content

This content is outdated. For information about Windows Azure AD Access Control (ACS), see Access Control Service 2.0 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=228494).

Windows Azure Active Directory Access Control (also known as Access Control Service or ACS) is a cloud-based service that provides an easy way of authenticating and authorizing users to gain access to your web applications and services while allowing the features of authentication and authorization to be factored out of your code. Instead of implementing an authentication system with user accounts that are specific to your application, you can let ACS orchestrate the authentication and much of the authorization of your users. ACS integrates with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories such as Active Directory, and web identities such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook.