Application Front-Ends Must Not Make Authorization Decisions
First, let’s get the usual introductions out of the way. For an in-depth discussion of what Authorization is, check out this post. For a complete introduction to Authorization concepts see my Authorization Series. This post continues my long-running Authorization Series. In this post, we’re going…
API Gateways and Multiple Consumer Types
Sometimes at client sites, I see a separation of APIs advertised on an API Gateway based upon consumer type. Sometimes, this is unavoidable, but there should be a core set of APIs and a general push to create APIs that are reusable. Reusability of APIs is a foundational building block of API…
Making Authorization Decisions
This blog post continues our discussion of Authorization in the API space. It will explore common authorization patterns with API Gateways and the backend API Providers. Generally, the API Gateway will apply a Coarse Grained Authorization (CGA) decision and the API Provider will implement Fine…
OAuth2 Access Tokens vs API Keys — Using JWTs
There are several approaches to securing APIs. Every API Gateway vendor supports the same core set of API security mechanisms. API Keys and OAuth2 are two examples of these authentication (plus authorization) mechanism. When should one be used over the other? What are the differences between the…
OpenID Connect Logout
The OpenID Connect (OIDC) family of specs supports logout (from a single application) and global (or single) logout (from all applications that the user has logged into through the OpenID Provider, OP), but these features are optional or in draft status (as of Q2, 2017). So, these spec features may…
Identity Propagation in an API Gateway Architecture
The power of end-to-end user security context with APIs