Build Server Side Authentication in Grails with OAuth 2.0 and Okta
What is Grails, what is Groovy, and why would we choose them over Spring Boot? In this post I’ll walk you through implementing server-side authentication in Grails using OAuth 2.0 and Okta. Before we dive in, however, I want to talk a little bit about why you’d be using Grails + Groovy in the first place, and how it can make your life easier in specific situations. Grails is an open source “convention over configuration”...
Use OpenID Connect for Authorization in Your ASP.NET MVC Framework 4.x App
A common practice in web applications is to have a restricted area for registered users, and perhaps another for administrators. Whether this restricted access area is premium content, or simply the order history for your e-commerce site’s users, it’s important that it be properly secured. OpenID Connect (OIDC) makes it easy, but it can be tricky to set up in ASP.NET MVC framework. In this post, I’ll show you how to create groups and use...
WebAuthn: A Developer's Guide to What's on the Horizon
There’s been a lot of news lately about the new W3C Web Authentication API, also known as WebAuthn. Want to know what it’s all about? Let’s take a closer look. The Web Authentication API allows browsers to make use of hardware authenticators such as the Yubikey or a mobile phone’s biometrics, like a thumbprint reader or facial recognition. WebAuthn can be used with these technologies to enable two-factor authentication to websites, or even as the...
Add Auth to Your PWA with Okta and Stencil
Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) are the newest technology on the web dev block and they’ve arrived just in time to solve a growing problem. Many companies are struggling to keep isolated development teams across their organization up-to-date when new features are released. Some companies are even trying to decide if it’s worth the cost to develop both a web app and a mobile application. Not surprisingly, it’s a headache most companies are looking to avoid....
How to Expand Your UX to a New Audience
As your business grows, you’ll probably reach a point where you need to grow your audience as well. Not just acquire more customers in your target segment, but expand to more segments and new types of customers. How do you adapt your product to your new audience? How do you avoid a “least common denominator” solution that isn’t great for anyone? At Okta, we faced these questions when the Stormpath team joined the company last...
What is the OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Grant Type?
The Authorization Code Grant Type is probably the most common of the OAuth 2.0 grant types that you’ll encounter. It is used by both web apps and native apps to get an access token after a user authorizes an app. This post is the first part of a series where we explore frequently used OAuth 2.0 grant types. If you want to back up a bit and learn more about OAuth 2.0 before we dive...
Secure Server-to-Server Communication with Spring Boot and OAuth 2.0
Most OAuth 2.0 guides are focused around the context of a user, i.e., login to an application using Google, GitHub, Okta, etc., then do something on behalf of that user. While useful, these guides ignore server-to-server communication where there is no user and you only have one service connecting to another one. The OAuth 2 client credentials grant type is exclusively used for scenarios in which no user exists (CRON jobs, scheduled tasks, other data...
Everything You Need to Know About the Twelve-Factor App
Ever heard of the twelve-factor app? Earlier this week I was scrolling through one of my favorite websites, Hacker News, and stumbled across the twelve-factor app for the first time. While I didn’t have time to read the official twelve-factor website, I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts about building twelve-factor apps, why they’re important, and what you need to know about them. Writing secure web applications can be really difficult! My...
Hello, Okta!
My name is Aaron Parecki, and last week I joined Okta on the Developer Advocacy team. I’ve been working with Okta since 2016 when we published the online version of my book, OAuth 2.0 Simplified, on oauth.com. In 2017, I worked with the team again on producing the print version, which we released at Okta’s conference in Las Vegas last fall. In 2016, Okta was focused on the enterprise IT market, providing a much-needed single-sign-on...
Token Authentication in ASP.NET Core 2.0 - A Complete Guide
Token authentication has been a popular topic for the past few years, especially as mobile and JavaScript apps have continued to gain mindshare. Widespread adoption of token-based standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect have introduced even more developers to tokens, but the best practices aren’t always clear. I spend a lot of time in the ASP.NET Core world and have been working with the framework since the pre-1.0 days. ASP.NET Core 2.0 has great...