This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ZeeshanAli-0704
If you have a REST API accessible on the internet, you're going to need to secure it. Here's the best practices on how to do that.
This process of defining access policies for your app is called authorization. In this article, we'll show you our best practices for implementing authorization in REST APIs.
Always use TLS
Every web API should use TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS protects the information your API sends (and the information that users send to your API) by encrypting your messages while they're in transit. You might know TLS by its predecessor's name, SSL. You'll know a website has TLS enabled when its URL starts with https:// instead of http://.
Without TLS, a third party could intercept and read sensitive information in transit, like API credentials and private data! That undermines any of the authentication measures you put in place.
TLS requires a certificate issued by a certificate authority, which also lets users know that your API is legitimate and protected. Most cloud providers and hosting services will manage your certificates and enable TLS for you.
If you're running your own web server without any third-party services, you'll have to manage your own certificates. The easiest way to do this is with Let's Encrypt, an automated certificate authority.
Use OAuth2 for single sign on (SSO) with OpenID Connect
there's a simpler way: use OAuth2 to integrate with existing single sign-on providers (which we'll refer to as "SSO").
SSO lets your users verify themselves with a trusted third party (like Google, Microsoft Azure, or AWS) by way of token exchange to get access to a resource. They'll log in to their Google account, for instance, and be granted access to your app.
Using SSO means that:
-You don't have to manage passwords yourself! This reduces the user data you store and therefore less data to be exposed in the event of a data breach.
-Not only do you avoid implementing login and logout, but you also avoid implementing multi-factor authentication.
-Your users don't need a new account and new password—they've already got an account with an SSO provider like Google. Less friction at signup means more users for you.
OAuth2 doesn’t directly handle authentication and is a more general framework built primarily for authorization. For example, a user might grant an application access to view their calendar in order to schedule a meeting for you. This would involve an OAuth2 interaction between the user, their calendar provider, and the scheduling application.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ZeeshanAli-0704
ZeeshanAli-0704 | Sciencx (2024-06-19T09:26:50+00:00) Best practices for REST API security: Authentication and authorization. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/06/19/best-practices-for-rest-api-security-authentication-and-authorization/
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