Scribd
Upload
34 views

What Is Token Authentication and How Does It Work

Uploaded by

Everything Channel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
34 views

What Is Token Authentication and How Does It Work

Uploaded by

Everything Channel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

What is Token Authentication and How

Does It Work?
Many of you mentioned that video piracy is a top concern for you
today, and you wanted to know what digital solutions are
available to curb this. In a previous infographic, we have
discussed the state of the video streaming market and piracy in
2019, and have presented some tips on how to fight pirates. In
today’s post, we are going to explore one of the solutions we
discussed in the infographic and that you highly requested, which
is ”How token-based authentication can help you to restrict access to
your video content to only authorized users”. We will also examine
why token authentication is becoming so popular lately for
securing web apps in general!
Token-based authentication is a modern method for user
authentication on web applications and websites.
To understand how it works, let us first go through what exactly
happens during user authentication. Then we will cover how
token-based authentication works and what the benefits of using
this approach are!
Today web applications have become increasingly sophisticated,
and many of them require users to create an account to access
specific services within the application.
Upon creating the account, the user is given account credentials.
With the account credentials, the user can log in, and then access
specific and relevant information & services on the web
application. The account credentials usually consist of a login ID
and a password.
However, this password-based authentication suffers from a few
drawbacks. Because passwords are user-generated, they can be
circumvented or phished by hackers, which could potentially lead
to data-breach and data-loss.
To address this challenge, other authentication systems such as
biometrics have become popular, as they are unique and
irreplicable, depending on the user’s biological makeup, retina, or
fingerprints.
However, biometric-authentication is considered less reliable than
digital authentication. Also, biometric systems often carry a
digital back-up, which make them susceptible to attack two on
fronts.
To address these shortcomings, token-based authentication has
recently become popular among companies. Token-based
authentication has certain features that make it reliable. We will
cover them in the next section.
Three essential parameters are used to evaluate the usefulness of
any particular authentication method:
1-Usability: How natural and hassle-free does the end-user find it?
2-Security: How difficult is it for a malicious actor to trick?
3-Deployability: How easy is it to deploy the authentication
systems for all users across platforms?
Now, let’s discuss how the token-based authentication differs
from the password-based authentication.
How Does Token-Based Authentication
Differ?
User authentication is an essential first step for many websites
and web applications, especially those that provide restricted
data access to registered/ qualified users only.
A standard way of authenticating is via the use of passwords that
are linked to the User ID. However, the traditional way of using
passwords to allow access runs into specific problems.
Mainly because they can get leaked or misused. Most passwords
are user-generated and can be hacked or phished.
Password-based authentication can be seen as inconvenient and
as a security risk, even if it is done over HTTP.
Also, with passwords, authentication needs to be done for each
additional protected resource.
What token authentication does here, is add a level of indirect
authentication.
When the user session starts by logging into an app, he/she
receives a token from the server. The token has an expiry time,
after which it cannot be used.
A token is essentially a machine-generated (generally random)
sequence of characters that can be used to authenticate an entire
user-session.
Now, the client application can use the authentication credentials
to create the authentication token, and in subsequent requests,
the app will only send the token.
When the server receives the token, it looks up the credentials of
the user to determine if the user is authorized to view the
information that it has requested.
When the user logs out of the application, the token gets
terminated.
After the token expires, a new token needs to be obtained for
continuing with the application. This way, it mitigates the security
risk if the token gets leaked. Additionally, token-based
authentication consists of a security algorithm that can block it in
case the token has been tampered with.
Why is Token-Based Authentication
Becoming Popular Today?
The token is stateless, and hence it helps reduce the load on the
server. All the information can be stored within the token meta-
data itself, and the server and client can exchange the token back
and forth, without the need to store the user or session data.
Token-based authentication becomes especially handy in the case
of services that require the user to do multiple logins or switch to
different application systems during the user session. The user
might not be willing to trust multiple applications with their
username/ password.
The user need not do multiple logins, but instead can pass the
token that they have been given to the other application system,
which they’re willing to trust for a limited time.
This also happens, for example, when the web app needs to
redirect the user to another server or domain (an example is an e-
commerce system redirecting the user to a payment site).
Typically, in this case, the user should be required to login once
again. But with token-based authentication, the server can
authenticate the user without the need to ask for a new login.
This leads to an improved user experience by saving the user
time & effort. Multi-logins also make it more vulnerable to
password attacks.
When multiple servers are used to host an application, the user
information can be sent within the token meta-data itself,
reducing the load on the server to validate the credentials.
In short, tokens help to secure your application and improve your
website.
Token-based authentication also helps protect the application
against CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery).
Thus, token-based authentication is more secure, mobile-ready,
and easily scalable without putting undue strain on your
servers.
Tokens are crucial in helping you secure your applications and
help deliver a positive user experience within your web
application. With token authentication, you can ensure that the
video content on your web application can only be accessed by
the authorized user – curbing content piracy.
At Medianova, we provide global CDN solutions in streaming,
encoding, caching, micro caching, hybrid CDN, and website
acceleration. We have delivered and managed CDNs for leading
enterprises, and our state-of-art solutions are benchmarked
against industry-leading quality parameters.

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy