One of the myths surrounding externalized authorization is that it’s too complicated as sometimes what we don’t know can seem daunting or overwhelming. This leads to many organizations finding themselves with lackluster security leading to damage costs, data breaches, and more.
However, proactive action can pave the way for greater control and optimization. By knowing where to begin, understanding what applications can be integrated with externalized authorization, and how it won’t cripple your system, you can make sure your organization is in control of your data.
Where does my organization begin?
When beginning your organizations journey with externalized authorization can be broken down into four simple steps:
- Decouple: Externalizing authorization allows you to separate the cost of security from the cost of the application.
- Measure: Once costs are separated, you can measure the overhead incurred by authorization.
- Optimize: Once we know the overhead cost, you can optimize to achieve optimal performance. In some cases, the result may perform better than the original application.
- Reduce: As a result, you can reduce application load by getting rid of illegitimate use upfront through defense-in-depth approach.
By completing this process, you can ensure that your security methods are cost-effective and optimized.
What applications can be integrated with externalized authorization?
As long as there’s a hook, there’s a way to externalize authorization within an application. Thanks to modern efforts, most applications already have a hook built into them, but for a rule of thumb, we often integrate with three categories: APIs and API Gateways, homegrown applications and microservices, and databases.
APIs and API gateways
This way is a very quick, easy and non-destructive way to begin externalizing authorization. In this process, instead of the API gateway itself simply forwarding the API request downstream to a microservice, the gateway itself can apply some authorization to it.
For example, the API gateway typically already knows the user's identity, the URL path, and any query parameters. With externalized authorization, it can generate an authorization request — like 'Can this user access this API or specific resource ID?' — and get a decision from the Policy Decision Point (PDP) right at the gateway, before the request goes further into your environment. In other words, externalized authorization in tandem with APIs and API gateways is similar to putting a bouncer at the door to keep the troublemakers from getting into the night club.
Home-grown applications and microservices
When something is homegrown (applications, microservices, etc.), you can use reports software development kits (RSDKs) or authorization software development kits (SDKs) to write authorization where it matters to your organization and reflects the use cases that need to be implemented. Externalizing authorization at this level gives you precise control, enabling fine-grained access decisions directly within your application — such as triggering on or off features or changing the user experience in a UI if it already exists within your application.
Databases
Behind every great application is a great database. With externalized authorization, you’re able to filter your data in a couple different ways.
For example, let’s say you have an API gateway set up that allows you to do authorization on the way in. If the question “can this specific user access this certain data?” is asked, externalized authorization in this situation would not only enhance the microservices, but also allow you to create a “data filter” which can describe the conditions under which you can see information. Conditions such as “you can only see documents that are from the same country of origin as your citizenship” where the filter would be “country=U.S.A.” or “country=Canada”.
In addition, there’s also SAP, Sharepoint, other off-the-shelf applications, and more. If you’re unsure about whether Axiomatic’s solution can integrate with your applications, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our solution experts.
Won’t externalizing authorization cripple my system?
The short answer: no.
Not only is there a cost to everything, but there is also a cost to not doing anything. You would think that your existing application with its baked in security, authentication, and authorization is performing at its optimal experience.
But the truth is: it’s not. When you have a large monolithic system, it’s hard to know how much each part — like the authorization checks or the application logic — contributes to overall cost. But once you start breaking down the monolith, you can measure each component individually and optimize them to improve the system’s overall efficiency.
Another common myth is that just because you might not see the actual cost to your current authorization model, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. Externalizing your authorization not only helps you visualize and optimize security-related costs, but also ensures consistent enforcement of authorization requirements across all your applications — eliminating the need to build and maintain separate authorization logic for each one.
The power of externalized authorization
While externalizing authorization may initially seem daunting, its advantages far outweigh the challenges. By adopting this proactive approach, organizations can optimize system performance, reduce costs, and strengthen security across applications. Whether it's APIs, microservices, databases, or other integrations, externalized authorization provides the flexibility and control needed to adapt to evolving security demands.
Ready to gain more knowledge on policy-driven authorization? Here are some additional resources that look at this topic: