What Being a Musician Taught Me About Being a Programmer
I’ve been a musician most of my life. I was in bands when I was in junior high up until I joined the Army at 19. I started writing software a few years after getting out of the military and kinda put music to the side. Recently, I’ve started to play in bands again, and something struck me about the dynamics of playing with other musicians and how that prepared me for writing software on...
Build Your First NestJS Application
NestJs is a popular Node.js framework that is built with typescript and makes use of object-oriented programming, functional programming, and functional reactive programming. NestJs boasts that it provides a framework for building scalable server-side applications. NestJs integrates nicely with Okta’s single sign-on provider. Okta makes securing a web service, such as the one you will build, quick and easy. Create Your Okta Application with the CLI The first thing you will need to do is...
Building and Securing a Go and Gin Web Application
Today, we are going to build a simple web application that implements a to-do list. The backend will be written in Go. It will use the Go Gin Web Framework which implements a high-performance HTTP server. The front end will use the Vue.js JavaScript framework to implement a single page application (SPA). We will secure it using Okta OAuth 2.0 authentication. Let’s get started! PS: The code for this project can be found on GitHub...
Tutorial: Chef and Account Automation with Okta
Tip: This tutorial is part of our series on integrating Okta with popular infrastructure as a code solution. If you’re not into Chef, check out our Ansible, Puppet, and Terraform tutorials. Chef cookbooks are a great way to manage infrastructure at scale. However, like other configuration management tools, Chef works best when cookbooks don’t change often. This is easy to accomplish in typical server setup and configuration tasks like install Nginx and tweak conf file....
Use Okta like a Rockstar
Rockstar chrome extension is a third-party, Non-Okta Application (as defined in Okta’s Master Subscription Agreement). Okta is not involved in making this chrome extension available, and we have neither oversight nor input into its security features and functionality. For questions regarding this, or any other, Non-Okta Application(s) your organization uses in connection with the Okta Service, please contact the application provider directly for more information. Rockstar is a Chrome extension that adds features to the...
Tutorial: Ansible and Account Automation with Okta
Tip: This tutorial is part of our series on how to integrate Okta with popular Infrastructure as a Code solution. If you’re not into Ansible, check out our Puppet and Terraform tutorials. I love using Ansible to deploy and manage configuration at scale. However, like any other configuration management solution, Ansible works best when playbooks don’t change often. This is easy to accomplish when you manage only server artifacts and binaries, but it can get...
API Key Best Practices and Examples
When you’re using a REST API, especially one that incurs costs or has usage limits, you need to use an API key to access the API in question. For example, if you’re creating a user account with the Okta API, you’ll need to include your API key in that request for it to succeed. Because API keys grant access to API calls which may change important data or incur significant charges. It is therefore important...
Building a GitHub Secrets Scanner
GitHub reconnaissance is a tactic that attackers use to gather information about their targets. Attackers analyze organizations’ GitHub repositories and check for sensitive data that has been accidentally committed or information that could lead to the discovery of a vulnerability. For this tutorial, let’s build a scanner that automates the GitHub recon process! We will be scanning your GitHub repositories using the method mentioned in the “Tightening Up Your GitHub Security” post. You will be...
Tutorial: Puppet and Account Automation with Okta
If you use Puppet to automate configuration management across dynamic server fleets, there’s a question about identity & access management – how do you get accounts and credentials on the machines? A common practice is to push SSH Keys for every admin user to every server. This has major security implications, however. What happens when an administrator leaves the company? It is usually up to someone to clear out those keys on each machine, oftentimes...
Reactive Java Microservices with Spring Boot and JHipster
Java has been at the forefront of microservice architectures since they came to prominence a few years ago. It’s a popular language with well-known, high-quality frameworks, like Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, and Spring Security. Spring Boot 2.0 introduced a new web framework called Spring WebFlux. Previous versions of Spring Boot only shipped with Spring MVC as an option. WebFlux offers a way for developers to do reactive programming. This means you can write...