Thursday, February 13, 2020

AWS Cognito User Pools vs Identity Pools

Understanding AWS Cognito User and Identity Pools for Serverless Apps - The New Stack

An Identity Provider is a service that manages authentication, providing a user login and the ability to verify a user’s identity. AWS Cognito has its own Identity Provider (using User Pools, which are explained below), but it can also integrate with well-established third-party Identity Providers like Facebook and Google. Additionally, Cognito can integrate with any Identity Provider that implements the SAML or OAuth2 protocols. The process of integrating with a third-party for authentication is called Federation.

User Pools and Identity Pools (also called Federated Identities).
User Pools provide a user directory for your application, including all the bells and whistles that come with user management, like sign-up, sign-in, group management, etc. User Pools also provide your app with information like the user’s ID and group membership, so that your code can handle authorization.

Identity Pools
, in contrast, are used to assign IAM roles to users who authenticate through a separate Identity Provider. Because these users are assigned an IAM role, they each have their own set of IAM permissions, allowing them to access AWS resources directly.


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