IAM

Introduction One of the most common sources of confusion in identity and access management is the difference between authentication and authorization. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they represent distinct concepts that serve different purposes in security systems. Authentication: Who Are You? Authentication is the process of verifying someone’s identity. It answers the question: “Who are you?” Common Authentication Methods Something you know: Passwords, PINs, security questions Something you have: Hardware tokens, mobile devices, smart cards Something you are: Biometrics (fingerprints, face recognition, iris scans) Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Combining multiple methods for stronger security Authentication Flow Example ...

Introduction Not all identities are human. In modern distributed systems, we have two primary types of identities: user identities (humans) and workload identities (machines, services, applications). Understanding the differences is crucial for building secure systems. User Identities: The Human Element User identities represent real people who interact with systems through applications, dashboards, and APIs. Characteristics Interactive authentication (login flows) Long-lived sessions with refresh capabilities Subject to human behavior (password reuse, phishing) Require user experience considerations Need account recovery mechanisms User Identity Examples Employee accessing company resources Customer logging into a web application Administrator managing cloud infrastructure Developer using CLI tools User Authentication Methods Username and password Multi-factor authentication (MFA) Biometrics Passwordless (WebAuthn, magic links) Social login (Google, GitHub) Workload Identities: The Machine Element Workload identities represent non-human entities like services, applications, containers, and VMs that need to authenticate and access resources. ...