Authentication, authorization and sessions
Mixing up authentication, authorization and sessions leads to ambiguous specs and security gaps nobody saw coming. This lesson teaches you to tell these three notions apart, to understand what separates a session cookie from a token, and to decide for your product how long a session lasts and how access gets taken away.
Lesson objective
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to distinguish authentication, authorization and session, explain what a session cookie and a token (JWT, refresh token) change, and specify your product's session durations, sign-out and access revocation.
Topics covered
- authentication vs authorization
- user sessions
- JWT
- refresh token
- access revocation
In the glossary
Where it fits
Knowing who signs in
How do you verify users' identity, keep their session and give them access back without opening a security hole?
Lessons in this module
- Authentication, authorization and sessions (this lesson)
- Passwords and account recovery
- Two-factor authentication and passkeys
What you will learn in this module
This lesson is part of the course Design authentication and permissions for a product
- Distinguish authentication, authorization and session, and specify session durations, sign-out and access revocation.
- Specify password rules and account recovery journeys following current recommendations (NIST SP 800-63B-4, CNIL, OWASP).
- Choose strong authentication factors (TOTP app, passkeys), plan their rollout and specify the fallback journeys.
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