Ways of securing your spring boot application

What does API mean for applications?

Application Programming Interface is referred to as API. Any software with a specific function is referred to as an application when discussing APIs. The interface can be compared to a service agreement between two programs. This agreement specifies the requests and responses the two parties will use to communicate.

The following are some of the ways in which APIs can be secured in your spring boot application:

1. Basic authentication: This involves adding an "Authorization" header to your HTTP requests, with a value of "Basic base64Encode(username: password)" where "username" and "password" are the credentials for the user. You can then use the Spring Security module to authenticate these credentials.
2. Token-based authentication: In this approach, you issue a token to the client when they authenticate, and the client includes this token in the "Authorization" header of subsequent requests. You can then use the Spring Security module to validate the token and authenticate the user.
3. OAuth2 authentication: OAuth2 is a widely used standard for authorization, and Spring Security provides support for it. With OAuth2, you can delegate authorization to a third party (such as Google or Facebook) and obtain an access token that can be used to authenticate the user.
4. HTTPS: Using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) ensures that all communication between the client and the server is encrypted, making it more difficult for someone to intercept and read the data being transmitted.
5. Input validation: It's important to validate all input to your APIs to ensure that it is in the expected format and does not contain any malicious code. Spring provides support for input validation through the use of Bean Validation and Data Binding.
6. Rate limiting: Setting limits on the number of requests that a client can make in a given time period can help protect your API from being overwhelmed by excessive requests. Spring Security provides support for rate limiting through the use of the RateLimiter module.