Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management solution from Red Hat that provides a centralized platform for authentication and authorization. It acts as a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution for web and mobile applications and also provides secure authorization to access APIs. You no longer have to worry about storing or authenticating users in your applications. Keycloak does this for you!

In this article, we will explore Keycloak's core features and benefits.

Key features of Keycloak

There are several reasons why you may consider using Keycloak for your application architecture.

Single Sign-On

Keycloak provides a centralized authentication solution that allows users to log in once and access multiple applications and services. So it is not necessary that your application itself has to provide a login form and the user accounts have to be stored in its own backend. The users of your application authenticate with Keycloak and you decide which of your applications the user gets access to.

Admin Console

Keycloak provides a user-friendly admin console for managing all functions of the Keycloak server. You can manage client applications and their authorization policies as well as create, edit and delete users and manage their roles and permissions.

The Account Management Console allows users to manage their accounts. Users can:

• change their password

• update their profile data

• set up two-factor authentication

• manage their session and device activity

• ...and a few things more

Security and open standards

Keycloak provides strong authentication and authorization mechanisms to secure access to applications and services, allowing you to control who has access to your APIs and what actions they can perform. There is also support for two-factor authentication, providing an additional layer of security to your application.

It is based on open standards, including OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 and SAML. This allows it to integrate with a wide range of applications and services.

Integration

Keycloak integrates with popular identity providers such as LDAP, Active Directory, and social networks like Google, LinkedIn, GitHub and others. This enables you to leverage existing identity management solutions in your organization.

Customization

Keycloak is highly customizable, allowing you to configure authentication and authorization policies to meet your specific needs. You can configure password policies, enforce multi-factor authentication, and define roles and permissions for users.

In addition, it is also possible to customize the look and feel through themes, for example, to have a login and registration form in your corporate design.

Coming up next in this series

The next part of this series will be about how to get Keycloak running on your local machine, so we can take a closer look at some of the functionality described.