Chapter 12. Securing an API

Security is one of the most commonly discussed problems related to microservices-based architecture. There is always one main problem for all security concerns—a network. With microservices, where typically there is much more communication over the network than there is for monolithic applications, the approach to authentication and authorization should be reconsidered. Traditional systems are usually secured at the border and then allow the frontend service full access to the backend components. The migration to microservices forces us to change this approach to delegated-access management.

How does Spring Framework address the security concerns of microservices-based architecture? It provides several projects that implement different patterns regarding authentication and authorization. The first of these is Spring Security, which is a de facto standard for secure Spring-based Java applications. It consists of a few submodules that help you get started with SAML...