Keycloak
Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management (IAM) solution developed by Red Hat. It provides single sign-on (SSO), authentication, authorization, and identity brokering services for applications and services. Keycloak is designed to secure modern applications with minimal effort and integrates seamlessly with standard identity protocols.
Keycloak enables centralized management of users, roles, and access policies across a wide range of environments, including cloud-native applications and microservices.
Key benefits of Keycloak
- Single Sign-On (SSO): Allows users to authenticate once and access multiple applications without re-authenticating.
- User Federation: Supports integration with external identity providers for user authentication, e.g. LDAP, Active Directory, and own providers with relational databases.
- Identity Brokering: Easy configuration through the admin console to add social network login (social SSO), or authenticate via OpenID Connect or SAML 2.0 Identity Providers.
- Standard Protocols: Implements widely used identity protocols such as OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and SAML 2.0.
- User Management: Includes built-in tools for managing users, groups, roles, and permissions through a web UI or REST API.
- Customization: Provides SPI (Service Provider Interfaces) for customizing login flows, user federation, and more.
Keycloak simplifies identity and access management by offering an out-of-the-box solution that minimizes the need for custom security implementations in individual services. It can be deployed as a standalone server, as a container image, or integrated into Kubernetes environments.