ebook

Building a scalable authorization system: a step-by-step blueprint

A practical guide to setting a strong foundation for your application’s authorization layer. Pulling from our founders’ experience and interviews with over 500 developers, we share the six key requirements that all authorization layers have to include to avoid technical debt, and how we satisfied them while building our authorization layer.

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Foundational requirements for building an authorization layer that won’t put you in technical debt

Security

Security

The drive to zero trust architecture puts greater pressure on companies to ensure their security meets the ‘never trust, always verify’ mantra. Learn the importance of security in authorization layers, along with several key aspects and design considerations to take into account when building your own, or choosing an off-the-shelf solution.

Topics covered: Transport layer security, protobufs, gRPC, auditability, zero trust architecture, GitOps, version control

Reliability

Unlike authentication, which happens on login, authorization is constantly happening during a user’s session. That means that an unreliable authorization layer is either a usability nightmare or a security failure. Understand how to create an authorization layer that’s resilient to changing requirements and potential failures.

Topics covered: Availability, validation and testing framework, schema enforcement, canary developments
Reliability
Speed

Speed

Security often becomes a trade-off between usability and protection. However, a well-designed authorization layer should minimize this compromise. Explore how you can address the real-world challenges caused by latency, while still maintaining the integrity of your authorization layer.

Topics covered: Fast authorization decisions, optimized policy compilation, latency, gRPC, protobufs, telemetry

Scalability

Authorization needs to be evaluated on every call. Having an authorization layer that can scale up in both volume and complexity is key to ensuring you don't run into any bottlenecks as your user base grows.Explore methods to design and implement a scalable authorization layer. 

Topics covered: Stateless design, decreased internal dependencies, SDKs, APIs, deployment agnosticism
Scalability
Extensibility

Extensibility

Authorization should adapt to changing software requirements (evolving user bases & new business needs) without requiring significant code changes. Understand how to reduce the burden on developers when updating authorization logic, minimize the risk of technical debt, and ensure the authorization layer remains relevant and effective as software evolves.

Topics covered: Contextual roles, RBAC, ABAC, flexible policy conditions, Google CEL, scoped policies, authorization-aware data filtering

Great developer experience

A well-designed authorization layer must prioritize a seamless developer experience to ensure ease of adoption and long-term usability. Simple, human-readable configurations like YAML, robust testing frameworks, comprehensive SDKs, IDE integrations, and pre-built examples for major frameworks reduce implementation time and errors.

Topics covered: Simple policies, YAML, testing frameworks, REPL & Playground, IDE integrations, SDKs, authentication integrations, framework integrations, cloud-native tooling, ORM integration
Great developer experience

About the author:

Emre Baran, ex-Googler, entrepreneur & software lead with 20+ years of experience. Cerbos founder.

  • Structured framework to help developers design an authorization layer
  • Based on 500+ interviews with engineers, EMs, architects, IAM leads
  • Explores 20+ technologies, approaches, and standards


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What’s inside the ebook

  1. The 6 key requirements and why they are essential when building an authorization layer.
  2. How minimum viable solution authorization layers accrue technical debt.
  3. The tradeoff between performance and security, especially with Zero Trust Architecture.
  4. How stateless authorization builds scalability.
  5. Why flexibility in accommodating changes in roles and policies is essential for future-proofing.
  6. Why it’s important to keep the developer experience in mind while building an authorization layer.
  7. How separating your authorization layer from the core app code boosts scalability, testability, and maintenance. 
  8. What technologies, frameworks and architectural approaches can help you build secure authorization.
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About Cerbos

Authorization management solution for authoring, testing, and deploying access control policies. Implement scalable and secure fine-grained authorization.