Session

In the good old days, your users would log into a web app with a username and password. But now people expect an alphabet soup of SSO, 2FA, OAuth, OIDC, SAML, FIDO2, OTP… What do they all mean - and why do they matter? Why is central authentication useful? What does two-factor authentication really protect us from, and what’s still wide open? Learn how to keep your users safe as we discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of modern authentication mechanisms for the Web.

We’ll cover what authentication is, common ways of doing it, and common pitfalls. We’ll also cover what makes a web authentication system good, and whether that’s distinct from whether it’s secure (spoiler alert: it is!). Attendees will come away with a sense of what the authentication landscape looks like for modern web apps and why, and a few weird industry factoids to share at dinner parties.

This talk is aimed at anyone passingly familiar with web development, with an interest in security, or who simply wants to know what’s really going on when you ‘sign in with Google.’