Authentication & Authorization

Question 1

What is authentication and authorization?

Answer 1

Authentication is a process in which a user identifies itself and the application validates its identity.

Authorization is a process in which the application verifies if the user can perform certain action.

Question 2

What are the most common types of authentication?

Answer 2

Basic (user, password)
API key
Token-based (JWT)
Multi-factor (MFA)
Certificate-based

Question 3

What’s the difference between token based auth and sessions?

Answer 3

In token based, the token gets sent on each request in the Authorization header, the token contains all the information about the current session.

In session based auth, we have a session ID that gets sent in the cookies and the server checks if the session exists.