Member-only story
Please Stop Writing Your Own User Authentication Code
It’s time to adopt safer solutions and save time and money
Most apps require some sort of authentication. You might be a developer working for a large company on their line-of-business apps, which require limiting access to authorized employees and checking their permissions. Or you might be building a new SaaS app, and you want users to create and maintain their profiles.
In both those cases and more, your first step when building the app will likely be creating the authentication and user management workflows. That is, creating a sign-up form and a login page, at the very least. Authentication is one of the most common features developers working on web apps are asked to implement, yet it’s also one of the most overlooked ones.
Building a safe authentication system is a really hard task, much harder than you’d think, and very easy to get wrong. Even worse, mistakes can have catastrophic effects. At its core, user management and authentication require just a few web forms, and it could appear to be a very simple task. However, the devil is in the detail, and building those things securely (and in a privacy-conscious way, when possible or even required) is no small feat.
