Summary

In this chapter, we had the opportunity to understand how the current trends map to the topic of authentication, when OAuth is required, and when tools can help to facilitate authentication without OAuth.

We started the chapter by outlining the API proliferation phenomenon and the related implications. We then showed you a diagram to outline how APIs are typically organized within a company and how they are classified, as well as the authentication requirements for each classification. We also reported the modern way to manage services and APIs with a service mesh and the related authentication implications.

This chapter also outlined bad practices, such as multiple IdPs, and provided an example of a real-world antipattern that we encountered during our work. In the next chapter, we’re going to be a little more technical and focus on some of the most widely adopted cloud IdPs.