What is Authorization service and why does it matter?
Tags: api, security, permify, programming
Published: 2022-09-15 06:42:35

## Introduction

[Authorization services](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/authorization-service) are the tools you need to protect your data, prevent unauthorized access and ensure your customers’ security. These services can help you with things like [fraud detection](https://www.spiceworks.com/it-security/vulnerability-management/articles/what-is-fraud-detection/), [real-time transaction monitoring](https://www.kycportal.com/embedded-transaction-monitoring), and even [risk assessment](https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/risk_assessment.html). This article will help you understand what authorization services are, how they affect the software development process, and why it’s important to know about them.

## What is Authorization Service

An authorization service is a module that allows you to manage access to your application and ease the development and maintenance of your authorization system. It is a way to manage [authorization](https://www.techtarget.com/searchsoftwarequality/definition/authorization) and [authentication](https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/authentication). It is used by developers and software engineers to build secure applications.

Authorization is an important part of software development. There are many different ways to implement authorization, but it's important for all apps to have some form of it in order to protect the user from malicious actors and unauthorized access attempts.

[Permify](https://www.permify.co/) is a great example of a fully open source security authorization service that offers a variety of binding and crafting options for your application;

## Why should I use Authorization Service?

You should use an API authorization service to:

- Avoid the hassle of building your own authorization service.
- Save time and money by leveraging existing, battle-tested code that has been developed by a team rather than starting from scratch.
- Get started quickly with a simple API that you can easily integrate into your application.
- Authorization services standardize the way you connect users to third-party apps. This makes it simple to create new applications using a different platform as opposed to creating your own authentication framework from absolute scratch.

## Why not create your own

You might be able to save money by creating your own authorization service, but it's probably not worth the time and expertise required on your part. If you do decide to go this route (and don't mind spending several weeks or even months trying unsuccessfully), make sure that whatever system you're working on is secure enough to store sensitive customer data; otherwise, any mistakes could cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars in fines, and on top of that, it will take time and money. You'll need to hire developers or write code yourself, which will take time away from other tasks for your company. Furthermore, there are already established solutions/services available freely that provide everything you require—so why not use something off-the-shelf?

## You can still do it yourself but...

If you're thinking about building authorization yourself, here's what to expect: You'll have to do it all. You'll have to manage your user's data, whether that means manually entering credentials or using a part of the system that generates them for you. You'll also have to write code for every place where users enter their credentials and keep track of who has access to what information. This can be a lot of work, especially if there's more than one developer working on the project, because then you need to make sure everyone uses consistent naming conventions and understands how they fit together.

## Use Permify to get free, open source authorization service.

[Permify](https://www.permify.co/) is a free and completely [open source](https://github.com/Permify) authorization service that allows you to create and manage fine-grained authorizations. Permify container image can be run and works as a Rest API. 

![Permify](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/it4icdhdmi83yi2a6vt1.png)

Permify is a simple, secure, and user-friendly authorization service that converts authorization data as relational tuples into a database that you specify to centralize your authorization data source. It's highly configurable via environment variables, allowing you to specify how you want your application to behave in terms of permissions.

## What most authorization services do?

To determine whether a user is authorized to access an API, the authorization service communicates with the access control service. If this is the case, it also makes use of the access control service to determine which resources the user has access to and what operations they can perform on those resources. In other words, the service determines whether your application is authorized to make certain requests of another application.

> The authorization service determines whether or not a user has permission to use an API.
> 

## What Permify does differently

Permify operates in a unique manner in comparison to other authorization services. The main distinctions are as follows:

- Permify container image can be run and functions as a Rest API. As a result, you do not need to install any binaries into your machine to use it.
- To centralize your authorization data source, it converts authorization data as relational tuples into a database that you point to. You can also perform access checks with a single API call after modeling your authorization with Permify's DSL - [Permify Schema](https://docs.permify.co/docs/getting-started/modeling).
- It converts and stores authorization data in-house with [high availability](https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/high-availability) by default. In the event of a failure or a change in maintenance mode, all operations, including the one that fetches authorizations, will fail safely without affecting previously committed operations/operations in progress.

## Permify as a standalone service

Permify can be used as a standalone service or built on top of any third-party Auth services. It supports authorization for both web and mobile applications and operates in client-server mode. It is an easy-to-use service for adding security layer to your application.

Some of the key notable features it offers which include:

- It adds fine-grained authorization to your existing identity and authentication solution.
- It aids in the management of authorization rules when the number of permutations becomes too large for code or API Gateway to handle.
- It enables you to create a unified authorization mechanism for your applications, and it works best when managing access controls in growing [microservice architectures](https://microservices.io/)—also it's the best option if your authorization logic is clogging up your codebase.

## Permify is a security authorization service that's freely available to all.

Permify is an authorization service that can be used to implement and maintain access control systems easily, rather than having to build a system yourself.

Permify is a simple and easy to use security authorization service for your web and mobile apps. This plugin secures your web applications by defining what users are allowed to do in each action, and it works with any kind of framework or application—including [ReactJS](https://reactjs.org/), [Nextjs](https://nextjs.org/), [AngularJS](https://angularjs.org/) or [Vue](https://vuejs.org/);etc, but also with several backend stacks. Permify can be used in a wide variety of application environments, including native mobile apps, web apps, and hybrid apps crafted using various different stacks of technologies.

## Conclusion

To sum up, authorization service is an important part of any software development process. It ensures that only authorized users have access to the data they need and no one else can gain access to the data without proper authorization. An authorization service is more secure than building your own, but it will not be perfect. If you want to take advantage of this functionality but don't want to spend time implementing it yourself there are several options available such as Permify, which allows anyone who needs access to their data through a REST API call to get access with just few line of code!