Identity and access management

As explained in Platform Engineering on Kubernetes

Identity management is the administration of user identities, accounts, credentials, and associated access information across applications and services.

Identity and access management administers user accounts, identity, authentication, authorization, and permissions across distributed application services. Implementing these concerns early clarifies who can do what and when. section 2.4 section 2.4.6

A frontend-facing service commonly handles the login flow through an OAuth2-compatible identity management service. That service validates credentials through an identity provider and supplies roles or group memberships; the frontend then propagates the authorization context to backend services. section 2.4.6

Distributed applications use identity management to:

• Protect operations from unauthorized actions, such as deleting conference presentations without organizer permissions. section 2.4.6
• Keep external users behind a frontend barrier instead of exposing every internal service directly. section 2.4.6
• Support social login through providers such as Google or GitHub without requiring separate application accounts. section 2.4.6

Figure 2.31 Identity management: The Role/Group is propagated to the backend services.

Trace how roles or group memberships move from the identity management service through the frontend to backend services. section 2.4.6

How Platform Engineering on Kubernetes covers it

How deep it goes

Explains the frontend-mediated OAuth2 flow, identity providers, roles, and propagation, but stops short of implementation commands.

Examples

Uses unauthorized presentation deletion, frontend-mediated requests, Google or GitHub login, Keycloak, and Zitadel.

What it assumes

Assumes familiarity with web applications and distributed services while introducing identity management, authentication, and authorization together.

What you can do after

Evaluate authorization boundaries and understand how identity context reaches backend services.

How it connects

Connects authentication, authorization, OAuth2, identity providers, social login, roles, group memberships, and frontend services.

liveBookmanning.com

Read Platform Engineering on Kubernetes on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Also explained in

• 

  liveBookmanning.com
  Data-Driven CybersecurityThe administration of digital identities and the credentials, authentication, authorization, and access rights associated with them.
• 

  liveBookmanning.com
  Architecting an Apache Iceberg LakehouseIdentity and access management is the discipline and technology for authenticating identities and controlling their access to resources.
• 

  liveBookmanning.com
  Microsoft Azure in ActionAn identity management system is a system that maintains digital identities and manages their authentication and access-related information.

Compare how 4 books explain identity and access management →

Related concepts

• Microsoft Entra IDincludes · Microsoft Entra ID is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access-management service for authenticating users, applications, and services and controlling their access to resources.
• authorizationuses · Authorization is the determination and enforcement of rules governing which subjects may access resources or perform operations.
• authenticationuses · Authentication is the process of establishing or verifying the identity of a user, service, device, or other communicating entity.
• object storeconfigures · An object store is a storage system that stores and retrieves data as independently addressable objects containing content and associated metadata.
• identity provideruses · An identity provider is a system that authenticates users or other entities and supplies identity information or authentication assertions to relying applications and services.
• Amazon S3configures · Amazon S3 is Amazon Web Services’ cloud object-storage service, which stores and retrieves data as objects organized in buckets.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Platform Engineering on Kubernetes. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.