Which authentication method should Azure Pipelines use to authenticate and control App2 builds?

Azure Pipelines can use a personal access token (PAT) for authentication and to control builds. A PAT is a secure alternative to a full password, granting specific permissions for a limited time. This allows fine-grained control over what Azure Pipelines can access and do within Azure DevOps, aligning with the principle of least privilege. Windows NTLM is an older authentication protocol primarily for Windows domains and is not suitable for Azure DevOps services. Certificates can be used for authentication but are generally more complex to manage for service-to-service communication like Azure Pipelines. SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains, typically used for single sign-on (SSO) with identity providers, not direct pipeline authentication.