System Architecture: Move Authentication to the API Gateway

When exposing an application to the outside world, consider a Reverse-Proxy or an API Gateway to protect it from attacks. Rate limiting comes to mind first, but it shouldn’t stop there. We can factor many features in the API Gateway and should be bold in moving them from our apps. In this post, I’ll show how to implement authentication at the Gateway API stage.

Overall Authentication Flow

The API Gateway doesn’t authenticate but delegates authentication to an authentication provider. After authentication, the Gateway forwards the request to the app. The app checks authentication and gets the associated identity and permissions.

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