Book Image

Keycloak - Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications

By : Stian Thorgersen, Pedro Igor Silva
Book Image

Keycloak - Identity and Access Management for Modern Applications

By: Stian Thorgersen, Pedro Igor Silva

Overview of this book

Implementing authentication and authorization for applications can be a daunting experience, often leaving them exposed to security vulnerabilities. Keycloak is an open-source solution for identity management and access management for modern applications, which can make a world of difference if you learn how to use it. Keycloak, helping you get started with using it and securing your applications. Complete with hands-on tutorials, best practices, and self-assessment questions, this easy-to-follow guide will show you how to secure a sample application and then move on to securing different application types. As you progress, you will understand how to configure and manage Keycloak as well as how to leverage some of its more advanced capabilities. Finally, you'll gain insights into securely using Keycloak in production. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to install and manage Keycloak as well as how to secure new and existing applications.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Keycloak
4
Section 2: Securing Applications with Keycloak
11
Section 3: Configuring and Managing Keycloak
17
Section 4: Security Considerations

Enabling TLS

Any request to and from Keycloak should be done through a secure channel. For that, you must enable HTTP over TLS, also known as HTTPS. In a nutshell, you should never expose Keycloak endpoints through HTTP.

Keycloak exchanges sensitive data all the time with user agents and applications. Enabling HTTPS is crucial to prevent several forms of attacks, as well as to benefit from different forms of authentication that rely on a TLS session established with the server.

Tip

The current best practice is to select a key size of at least 2,048 bits. In terms of protocol, Keycloak advertises the most secure protocols, such as TLS v1.2 and TLS v1.3. You should also be able to restrict the list of protocols to only advertise those you want.

The first step to enable HTTPS is to create or reuse a Java KeyStore where the server's private key and certificates are stored. If you are planning to deploy Keycloak in production, you probably have all the key material to enable...