Authorization in 2021
· 6 min read
The topic of authorization has seen a recent resurgence in interest from developers and security folks alike. The OWASP Foundation, a trusted voice on web application security, just updated its Top 10 Web Application Security Risks and for the first time rated 'Broken Access Control' as the top vulnerability facing developers. Also this year, Airbnb, Carta, and Intuit each separately published deep-dives detailing their newly built internal authorization services.
Authorization is by no means a new security concept. So why this renewed attention to it? In this post, we’ll look at authorization as it stands today, what's changed in the landscape, and go over some best practices developers should follow.