This article provides an analysis of JWTs (JSON Web Tokens, pronounced “jot”) from how they are used to pros and cons of using JWTs in your applic

Pros and Cons of JWTs

submited by
Style Pass
2023-03-16 19:30:04

This article provides an analysis of JWTs (JSON Web Tokens, pronounced “jot”) from how they are used to pros and cons of using JWTs in your application.

JWTs are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Customer identity and access management (CIAM) providers everywhere are pushing JWTs as the silver bullet for everything. JWTs are pretty cool, but let’s talk about some of the downsides of JWTs and other solutions you might consider.

One way to describe JWTs is that they are portable units of identity. That means they contain identity information as JSON and can be passed around to services and applications. Any service or application can verify a JWT itself. The service/application receiving a JWT doesn’t need to ask the identity provider that generated the JWT if it is valid. Once a JWT is verified, the service or application can use the data inside it to take action on behalf of the user.

Here’s a diagram that illustrates how the identity provider creates a JWT and how a service can use the JWT without calling back to the identity provider: (yes that is a Palm Pilot in the diagram)

Leave a Comment