Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

November 2020

Microservice Authorization with Open Policy Agent and Kuma | Kong Summit

Applications architected as microservices are becoming more prevalent every day, but just like their monolithic ancestors, microservice applications must adhere to organization-wide constraints around compliance, security, performance, etc. Authorization, controlling which people and machines can perform which actions, is a foundational security problem that requires new solutions in a microservice world because of changes in requirements around performance, availability, and even where authorization gets enforced architecturally.

Microservices vs API

In this article, we’ll cover the key differences between APIs and microservices as answered by our contributors consisting of senior decision-makers and CTOs from technology companies around the world. One of the most popular ways to consume data from a web service is through a web application programming interface (API). By interface, we are referring to an agreement, or schema, that anyone using this API must abide by.