Mastering Active Directory - Second Edition

What is a claim?

A few times in the preceding example, we have discussed claims. But what is exactly a claim, and how is it generated?

A claim is simply a statement about a user that is used for authorization purposes of claim-aware applications. Each claim contains a value about a user such as their UPN, email address, and Common Name (CN).

AD FS supports many different claim types. Claim types are used to show what sort of value will be included in the claim. The following table contains the most commonly used claim types:

Claim type	Description
UPN	UPN of the user
Email	RFC 5322-type email address
Given name	Given name of the user
CN	CN value of the user account
Name	Name of the user
Surname