AWS Security Blog

Category: Amazon Cognito

How to use OAuth 2.0 in Amazon Cognito: Learn about the different OAuth 2.0 grants

Implementing authentication and authorization mechanisms in modern applications can be challenging, especially when dealing with various client types and use cases. As developers, we often struggle to choose the right authentication flow to balance security, user experience, and application requirements. This is where understanding the OAuth 2.0 grant types comes into play. Whether you’re building […]

Amazon Cognito

How to customize access tokens in Amazon Cognito user pools

January 28, 2025: The following blog post highlights how to customize access tokens in Amazon Cognito user pools. With the introduction of new Cognito user pool feature tiers, the access token customization feature is now available as part of the default feature set for Essentials and Plus feature tier customers, so customers don’t need to […]

Use private key JWT authentication between Amazon Cognito user pools and an OIDC IdP

With Amazon Cognito user pools, you can add user sign-up and sign-in features and control access to your web and mobile applications. You can enable your users who already have accounts with other identity providers (IdPs) to skip the sign-up step and sign in to your application by using an existing account through SAML 2.0 […]

Approaches for migrating users to Amazon Cognito user pools

Update: An earlier version of this post was published on September 14, 2017, on the Front-End Web and Mobile Blog. Amazon Cognito user pools offer a fully managed OpenID Connect (OIDC) identity provider so you can quickly add authentication and control access to your mobile app or web application. User pools scale to millions of […]

Scaling national identity schemes with itsme and Amazon Cognito

In this post, we demonstrate how you can use identity federation and integration between the identity provider itsme® and Amazon Cognito to quickly consume and build digital services for citizens on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using available national digital identities. We also provide code examples and integration proofs of concept to get you started quickly. […]

Example default hosted UI with several login providers enabled

Should I use the hosted UI or create a custom UI in Amazon Cognito?

September 8, 2023: It’s important to know that if you activate user sign-up in your user pool, anyone on the internet can sign up for an account and sign in to your apps. Don’t enable self-registration in your user pool unless you want to open your app to allow users to sign up. July 27, […]

Simplify web app authentication: A guide to AD FS federation with Amazon Cognito user pools

September 8, 2023: It’s important to know that if you activate user sign-up in your user pool, anyone on the internet can sign up for an account and sign in to your apps. Don’t enable self-registration in your user pool unless you want to open your app to allow users to sign up. August 13, […]

How to set up Amazon Cognito for federated authentication using Azure AD

September 8, 2023: It’s important to know that if you activate user sign-up in your user pool, anyone on the internet can sign up for an account and sign in to your apps. Don’t enable self-registration in your user pool unless you want to open your app to allow users to sign up. In this […]

Implement OAuth 2.0 device grant flow by using Amazon Cognito and AWS Lambda

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to implement the OAuth 2.0 device authorization grant flow for Amazon Cognito by using AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB. When you implement the OAuth 2.0 authorization framework (RFC 6749) for internet-connected devices with limited input capabilities or that lack a user-friendly browser—such as wearables, smart assistants, video-streaming devices, […]

Access token security for microservice APIs on Amazon EKS

In this blog post, I demonstrate how to implement service-to-service authorization using OAuth 2.0 access tokens for microservice APIs hosted on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). A common use case for OAuth 2.0 access tokens is to facilitate user authorization to a public facing application. Access tokens can also be used to identify and […]