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How does authentication work in a microservice service?
It’s often necessary for resources and APIs published by a service to be limited to certain trusted users or clients. The first step to making these sorts of API-level trust decisions is authentication. Authentication is the process of reliably verifying a user’s identity. In microservice scenarios, authentication is typically handled centrally.
Why is the move to microservices so important?
The move toward microservices could have dramatic repercussions across the industry, allowing SaaS organizations to deploy many small services no longer dependent on large system overhauls, easing development, and on the user-facing side allowing easy pick-and-choose portals for users to personalize services to their individual needs.
How to control user identity within microservices?
There is a method that allows one to combine the benefits of isolated deployment with the ease of a federated identity. Jacob Ideskog of Curity believes that to accomplish this OAuth should be interpreted not as Authentication, and not as Authorization, but as Delegation.
How are microservices used in web service design?
For those readers not well-versed in the web discussion trends of late, the microservice design approach is a way to architect web service suites into independent specialized components. These components are made to satisfy a very targeted function, and are fully independent, deployed as separate environments.
What does Auth-Z mean in microservice architecture?
Auth-Z refers to what the user is authorized to do. The diagram below is a conceptual diagram of a Single-Page Application (SPA) that is driven by a Microservice architecture. This architecture utilizes an “edge” service, that provides “security” and “routing” in front of the microservice infrastructure downstream.
How is Azure Active Directory used in microservices?
When the API Gateway centralizes authentication, it adds user information when forwarding requests to the microservices. If services can be accessed directly, an authentication service like Azure Active Directory or a dedicated authentication microservice acting as a security token service (STS) can be used to authenticate users.
How does the client request access to the resource server?
The Client requests access to the Resource Server by calling the Authorization Server. The Authorization Server redirects to allow the user to authenticate, which is usually performed within a browser. This is essentially signing into an authorization server, not the app. The Resource Server asks the Authorization Server if the token is valid.