authentik is an open source Identity Provider that unifies your identity needs into a single platform, replacing Okta, Active Directory, and auth0. Authentik Security is a public benefit company building on top of the open source project.

Legacy security vendors that rely on black box development can't keep up with open source. It's an oft—discussed topic-the ability of open source communities to quickly jump in and collectively solve problems and innovate solutions—but it is equally believed that "serious" security software companies have proprietary software.

In this blog, we will take a closer look at the pros and cons of the various source availability types of SSO and other security software.

Access tokens make identity management and authentication relatively painless for our end-users. But, like anything to do with access, tokens also can be fraught with risk and abuse.

The recent announcement from Sourcegraph that their platform had been penetrated by a malicious hacker using a leaked access token is a classic example of this balance of tokens being great… until they are in the wrong hands.

This incident prompts all of us in the software industry to take yet another look at how our security around user identity and access can be best handled, to see if there are lessons to be learned and improvements to be made. These closer looks are not only at how our own software and users utilizes (and protects) access tokens, but also in how such incidents are caught, mitigated, and communicated.

📣 We are happy to announce that the first authentik Enterprise release is here! 🎉

The Enterprise release of authentik provides all of the functionality that we have spent years building in our open source product, plus dedicated support and account management. This Enterprise version is available in Preview mode in our latest release, 2023.8.

This is an exciting step for us, as we grow the team and the company and our user base. We officially became a company just last fall (I wrote about it in November 2022, in “The next step for authentik"), and this release is another move forwards in maturing authentik into the SSO and identity management app of choice.

One thing we want to acknowledge, up front, is that we would never have been able to achieve this goal without the years of support from our open source community. You all helped build authentik into what it is today, and that’s why all of our Enterprise-level features will be open core and source available, always.

There’s been a lot of discussion about licensing in the news, with Red Hat and now Hashicorp notably adjusting their licensing models to be more “business friendly,” and Codecov (proudly, and mistakenly) pronouncing they are now “open source.”

“Like the rest of them, they have redefined ‘Open’ as in ‘Open for business’”—jquast on Hacker News

This is a common tension when you’re building commercially on top of open source, so I wanted to share some reflections from my own experience of going from MIT, to GPL, back to MIT.

Identity – whether we’re talking about internal authentication (think Auth0) or external authentication (think Okta) – has become boring.

Little else proves this better than the fact that Okta and Auth0 are now the same company and that their primary competitor, Microsoft AD, survives based on bundling and momentum. Identity has become a commodity – a component you buy off the shelf, integrate, and ignore.

Of course, taking valuable things for granted isn’t always bad. We might regularly drive on roads we don’t think much about, for example, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.

The danger with letting identity become boring is that we’re not engaging in the problem and we’re letting defaults drive the conversation rather than context-specific needs. We’re not engaging in the solution because we’re not encouraging a true buy vs. build discussion.

My pitch: Let’s make identity fun again. And in doing so, let’s think through a better way to decide whether to build or buy software.

In scenarios where security is offered as optional, there's an inherent risk. Customers, particularly those with a limited knowledge of digital security, might not fully comprehend its significance or choose to sidestep these features due to budget constraints. However, these seemingly inconsequential choices can expose users to significant risks. Without proper security measures in place, customers can become vulnerable to security breaches, putting their sensitive data at risk.

This situation raises a pressing question: how do we strike a balance in this landscape that is fair to both users and providers? Ensuring user convenience while maintaining robust security measures is complicated. If we lean too heavily towards convenience, we risk compromising on security. Conversely, an overemphasis on stringent security measures may lead to a complex and off-putting user experience.

The first ever authentik hackathon just wrapped on Sunday, and we had a great time!

A huge thanks to our persistent hackers, who hacked from Wednesday through Sunday, and made some fantastic contributions to authentik. We are already looking forward to the next one (winter 2023, maybe?), and to another round of intense fun with our community members.

In today's digital landscape, businesses of all sizes increasingly rely on Software as a Service (SaaS) to streamline their operations and improve overall efficiency. However, as the adoption of SaaS applications continues to rise, so too do the security risks associated with these platforms. This has led to a growing demand for robust enterprise security features and Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions that can effectively safeguard sensitive data and protect businesses from cyber threats. In this blog, we'll delve into the intricacies of enterprise security, explore the benefits of SSO for businesses of all sizes, and examine the role of automation in ensuring robust security. We'll also discuss the importance of building SaaS apps with scalability in mind and highlight Authentik Security’s solution, authentik, as a unified authentication tool to help secure your organization.

Lit comes with its own library to help your app support multiple written languages. Lit's localization feature updates the page automatically when a language is switched during a browser session, but the documentation does not describe how you can switch languages.

Let's dive into how you might do that.

Here at Authentik Security, we are serious about your online security and our work… and we are also serious about our first ever authentik hackathon!

We described our upcoming inaugural hackathon in an earlier blog, and even built a dedicated web page for it, but now I want to break down some of the key reasons you should consider joining us on July 26 through July 30!