Lion Cipher Lab
Protect an app with Keycloak single sign-on (OpenID Connect)
- Identity & Access Management
- Intermediate
- ~60 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Almost every serious application needs login, and the single most common security mistake beginners make is writing that login themselves — rolling their own password storage, sessions and reset flows, and getting one of them subtly wrong. The professional answer is to delegate authentication to an identity provider that has solved those problems. Keycloak is the open-source standard-bearer, and OpenID Connect is the protocol the whole industry uses (it's what 'Sign in with Google' runs on). Wire one app to Keycloak and single sign-on stops being a buzzword.
What you'll learn
- single sign-on
- OpenID Connect
- identity providers
- realms/clients/users
- why not to build your own auth
Steps in this lab
- The rule that motivates everything: don't build your own login
- OpenID Connect in plain words
- Run Keycloak with Docker
- Create a realm and a user
- Register your app as a client
- Prove single sign-on end to end
- When to run your own IdP vs. use a hosted one