Deep Dive

For 99% projects, you should not build your own authentication systems.

I learned this the hard way—by doing it wrong multiple times in my early dev days.

Building the auth isn't difficult right? I just had to implement login, signup, and sessions .

But then came the feature creep: password strength checks, password resets, email verification, rate limiting, two-factor auth, role-based access, managing tokens, implementing oauth2 flows for social login & SSO .

I spent more time patching security holes and debugging edge cases than building the actual product.

Self-hosted authentication is like storing money in a personal safe—you're fully responsible for its security, maintenance, and recovery. While, third-party systems are like bank vaults—professionally guarded, constantly monitored, and equipped with advanced security features.

Security protocols like OAuth2.0 are complex and easy to mess up. Most teams don’t have the time or expertise to do it right.

Third-party auth providers like Auth0, Okta, Azure AD etc specialize in authentication security. They have teams of experts continuously patching vulnerabilities, enforcing best practices, and monitoring for threats.

There are different levels of authentication, moving from self-hosted to fully third-party managed solutions:

🔹 Level 1: Self-Hosted Authentication: For authentication you verify user identity using local database . For authorization, you control access locally based on roles or claims stored in your system.

🔹 Level 2: Self-Hosted With Third-Party OAuth Authentication is outsourced by third-party OAuth(e.g. Google or GitHub confirms user identity). Roles and permissions, for authorization is done locally .

🔹 Level 3: Third Party Hosted Auth System Authentication is fully managed by the third-party (e.g. Auth0, Okta, Azure AD) . Roles and permissions, for authorization can be managed locally or externally.

🔹 Level 4: Third Party Hosted Auth With External OAuth Providers Combining a third-party hosted system with the option for users to authenticate via other OAuth providers (e.g. Google , GitHub etc)

Choosing your level of authentication will be completely dependent on your applications needs, the sensitivity of the data it holds

You only choose #1, when you want to learn about authentication & authorization or you are building an MVP (minimum viable product)

You choose #2, You want to reduce friction with social logins , but you still want to own user data and roles

But, for the vast majority of the cases #3 & #4 is appropriate .

Some apps (eg: fintech, government) may require self-hosted systems for regulatory reasons. In that case, don’t build from scratch. Use proven open-source systems like Keycloak You’ll still need effort to host, configure , and maintain these.

TL;DR : Don't build your own auth unless you absolutely need to. It's risky, time-consuming, and easy to screw up

Dev Meme of the Week

• #RightMove 😂

• #TheNobles 👑 

• Great time to learn cybersecurity 😂

Best Links

1. A great read, on the security of the much talked about MCP protocol (cisco blog by Omar Santos )

2. A Practical Guide To Securing & Deploying AI (blog by Francis Odum )
   Really interesting to read about the 3 layers of ai /llm security:

   Data Layer – Secure the inputs that feed your model

   Model Layer – Protect the model lifecycle

   Interface Layer – Secure how employees or systems interact with AI

   
   
   That’s it for today folks. See you next week