In our blog series ‘Common problems with Keycloak’, we took a closer look at various challenges that users can experience when integrating and using Keycloak. To round off the series, we would now like to take another look at the things that Keycloak is particularly good at – because if you don’t know its strengths or don’t use them properly, this can also become a problem.
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Common problems with Keycloak: Not knowing its strengths
Now that we’ve taken a close look at the problems associated with using Keycloak in the last few articles, it’s time to take a closer look at some of Keycloak’s key strengths. Because, true to the motto ‘cobbler, stick to your last’, Keycloak should also be used first and foremost for what it does particularly well. In many cases, you can simplify its use and avoid problems at an early stage.
Setting up a secure single sign-on (SSO) network
Keycloak is a master at creating a secure SSO network. It allows users to log in once and access multiple applications without having to authenticate themselves repeatedly. This functionality is essential for an efficient user experience, especially in an environment where multiple services are used.
Integration of applications via SAML2 and OIDC
By supporting standard protocols such as SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC), Keycloak offers seamless integration of various applications. This brings significant flexibility and extensibility, allowing organisations to easily scale and manage their authentication processes.
User Federation and Identity Brokering
With the User Federation feature, organisations can easily integrate existing user databases, such as LDAP or Active Directory, into Keycloak. Identity brokering also allows users to log in with their existing identities with other providers such as Google, Facebook or with their company account.
Display of authorisation information
Keycloak can manage precise information on roles, groups and other authorisation data and integrate this into a policy for fine-grained access control. This makes it easier to ensure that users only have access to what corresponds to their authorisation level.
Secure user login and 2FA
The platform ensures secure user login and supports two-factor authentication (2FA) out of the box with tools such as Google Authenticator. The ability to easily connect additional 2FA services increases the security levels according to an organisation’s needs.
Extensibility and whitelabel solution
Keycloak is easily expandable and can be customised to specific needs, e.g. by adding additional 2FA services. This offers organisations the opportunity to create a whitelabel solution for their user interfaces, ensuring seamless integration into their own portal.
Open source community
As an open source project, Keycloak is constantly being developed by an active developer community – as you can see by browsing GitHub. The collaboration of many dedicated developers ensures that the tool remains robust and up to date.
Conclusion
The strengths of Keycloak are obvious: security, scalability, user-friendliness and flexibility. Many of the problems we have addressed in this blog series may stem from these capabilities not being fully utilised. If you don’t know Keycloak’s capabilities, you run the risk of creating a less secure and less efficient environment. A full understanding of Keycloak’s robust capabilities is therefore key to maximising the benefits of this versatile tool.
We hope that the articles in this series have given you a comprehensive overview of what Keycloak has to offer and how to avoid typical problems. Thank you for staying on the ball with us! If you have any questions or need further help, please get in touch and we’ll tackle the problem together.
