According to the State of Developer-Driven Security 2022 survey from Secure Code Warrior, as many as 86% of the developers interviewed do not view application security as a top priority when writing code! This is bad news – especially in today’s world of remote work, where applications are often cloud-based and available over various networks.

Application security is something every organization needs to pay attention to, as a breach could avalanche into huge financial losses. There are several application security solutions, of which Keycloak is an excellent one.

What is Keycloak?

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management (IAM) solution developed by RedHat. It can be used by teams to secure the development process, and also the application itself after development is complete.

Keycloak is a reliable solution that provides a dynamic single sign-on (SSO) and single sign-out, and supports protocols such as OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0, and OpenId Connect.

DevOps teams may be based remotely, and handle a large number of assets, each with different access rights for everything from files, APIs, and libraries, to repositories and databases. Keycloak is a good IAM solution for such requirements because it provides SSO, user authentication, and access restriction.

Here are some of the key benefits of using Keycloak.

Greater security

Keycloak is based on a set of administrative user interfaces and so can create permissions for protected resources, check them against authorization policies, and enforce authorization decisions. 

Keycloak authenticates the user by creating a one-time temporary code, so the app doesn’t need login forms to authenticate and store users. Shorter sessions that force users to re-authenticate after a set time are also possible using Keycloak – this is a best practice to curtail vulnerabilities.

Smooth authentication process

Keycloak supports different authentication protocols to allow developers to cover many types of applications with different security demands, using a single tool. 

It’s easy to implement security features with Keycloak. The tool also can be configured to allow users to log in with their Google or social media accounts. And since Keycloak sends authentication mails directly, no separate setup is needed. 

Keycloak also lends itself to two-factor authentication, which is recommended for most applications, and mandatory for all financial-based applications.

Easy maintenance and integration

In most cases, users need to develop the code to authenticate the user and generate authentication tokens, but this development process is automatic using Keycloak. 

With Keycloak, one need not maintain Users and Passwords in the application. This reduces user maintenance. For instance, after logging into the application with a username and password, Keycloak first validates the authentication and generates an OTP, which allows the user to enter the application. 

Keycloak integrates easily with Java-based support application frameworks like Springboot, as well as non-Java frameworks like .Net, without the need to migrate data.

CloudNow secures all development projects by following best practices including the use of a powerful IAM solution like Keycloak. We work with enterprises to facilitate easy login using an IAM on the final app as well. Get in touch with us today to understand the IAM solution that works for you.