SE Radio 664: Emre Baran and Alex Olivier on Stateless Decoupled Authorization Frameworks
Apr 15, 2025
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Emre Baran, CEO of Cerbos and veteran in B2B and B2C products, teams up with Alex Olivier, CPO of Cerbos with a diverse tech background, to explore stateless decoupled authorization frameworks. They clarify key terms and address the challenges and benefits of these systems. A deep dive into Cerbos showcases its advantages over Open Policy Agent. The duo discusses the intricacies of applying YAML for policy management and the critical role of audit logs in compliance. They wrap up with insights into emerging trends in authorization.
Understanding the distinction between authentication and authorization is crucial for implementing effective security measures within software systems.
Decoupled authorization allows centralized management of access controls, enhancing scalability and simplifying updates while reducing code complexity.
As AI technologies evolve, authorization frameworks must adapt to address new challenges posed by AI-driven access to sensitive data.
Deep dives
Understanding Authorization vs. Authentication
Authorization is often misunderstood as being synonymous with authentication, but it plays a crucially different role in software systems. Authentication is the process of verifying a user's identity, confirming who they are, while authorization determines what actions a user can perform based on their identity. For example, gaining entry to a secure location requires authentication to prove one's identity, but authorization decides if the authenticated person is allowed access based on their credentials—much like needing the correct visa to enter a country. It's essential to grasp this distinction for implementing effective security measures within applications.
Exploring Authorization Models
There are various models for managing authorization, with role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) being the most commonly recognized. RBAC limits access based on user roles—such as distinguishing between admins and regular users—whereas ABAC allows for more granular control based on specific attributes relating to users and resources. Additionally, relationship-based access control (REBAC) further refines access by examining the relationship between the user and the resource they are trying to access. Organizations must assess their unique requirements to choose the most suitable authorization model for their systems.
The Importance of Authorization in Software Design
Proper authorization mechanisms are paramount for maintaining security within software applications, as evidenced by various real-world failures that have occurred due to poor authorization practices. For instance, in finance-related applications, lack of clearly defined roles can allow unauthorized users to conduct significant transactions, leading to potential loss or breaches of sensitive data. Another notable case involved a popular ride-share application where employees had unrestricted access to user accounts, leading to misuse and breach of privacy. This underscores the necessity of implementing comprehensive authorization checks to protect user data and maintain system integrity.
The Value of Decoupled Authorization Systems
Implementing decoupled or externalized authorization allows organizations to manage access controls centrally, reducing complexity within application codebases that can become error-prone over time. This model enables developers to define authorization logic outside of application code, simplifying updates and enhancing overall system scalability and security. With a centralized service, any changes to authorization policies can be reflected across all applications seamlessly, and audit logging can be consolidated, providing clear insight into decision-making processes. Challenges such as latency and integration arise, but these can typically be addressed through strategic deployments and configurations.
Adapting Authorization for AI and ML Applications
As artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies evolve, the approach to authorization must also adapt to address unique challenges introduced by these systems. For example, AI systems, particularly chatbots, can potentially bypass traditional security layers and directly access sensitive data, necessitating robust permission checks on data usage and retrieval. Authorization mechanisms should be incorporated to filter data before it reaches the AI model, ensuring that responses are appropriate for the user based on their role and access level. This necessitates a reevaluation of existing authorization frameworks to ensure they are capable of handling the complexities introduced by AI technologies.
Emre Baran, CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, and Alex Olivier, CPO and co-founder, join SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan to explore “stateless decoupled authorization frameworks. The discussion begins with an introduction to key terms, including authorization, authorization models, and decoupled frameworks.
They dive into the challenges of building decoupled authorization, as well as the benefits of this approach and the operational hurdles. The conversation shifts to Cerbos, an open-source policy-based access control framework, comparing it with OPA (Open Policy Agent). They also delve into Cerbos’s technical workings, including specification definitions, GitOps integration, examples of usage, and deployment strategies. The episode concludes with insights into potential trends in the authorization space.
