Why Is Authenticating Google Cloud Platform Applications So Hard?

Distinguishing between Google Cloud Platform and a typical API’s authentication process emphasizes the need for secure credential storage.

Currently job searching? Give yourself an edge by developing a personal project using my free 5-page project ideation guide.

Moving from a pre-configured integrated development environment (IDE) to deployment can be as jarring as being jolted awake by a herd of pets or children in the morning (as a pet parent, I have firsthand experience with the former).

One of the biggest hurdles I worked to overcome in my first year of data engineering was understanding how to authenticate both to APIs and to my cloud provider, Google Cloud Platform (GCP). After building 50+ production pipelines, even now, the step I consistently get stuck on is authentication. API Authentication errors are particularly difficult to troubleshoot because error text is limited and status codes go under-documented. Typically an API request that is unauthenticated will return a status code of 401 and, simply, “Unauthorized.” Or, worse, simply: “Bad request.”

# JSON response example.

{"message": "Unauthorized", "status_code": "401"}

Things become even more confusing when a pipeline or application must utilize both an external vendor API and GCP. That’s two separate authentication steps for two separate APIs…