Claims & Scopes

Learn how claims and scopes can be used for standards-based authorization.

A claim is statement that a particular entity has a particular property. In authentication, we usually think of claims as assertions about a user, as asserted by the Identity Provider. Claims are critical to reach the highest level in the API Security Maturity model. When designing a token-based architecture, it's important to understand how identity data is passed around. Claims provide a fundamental means for how to trust that the data is valid and true. A scope is a grouping of claims. In OAuth, a scope is defined as a string that may represent a resource the Client requests access to. The Scope is what gives access to APIs (with a valid token). But Scopes are also what gives access to claims.

Claims Best Practices

Best practices for implementing claims. Learn how to issue custom claims step by step.

Scope Best Practices

Best practices for designing OAuth scopes in real world systems and managing them at scale. Discover how to perform API Authorization using Scopes.

Using Vectors of Trust

Vectors of Trust is a specification that provides a method for describing an identity transaction to determine a level of trust.

Default Scopes

Discover how to use the default scope with a set of default claims.

Selective Disclosure for JWTs (SD-JWT)

Selective disclosure is the ability to select which data within a signed document to disclose to a counterpart compared to sharing all data at once. This article describes SD-JWT, a format that allows for selectively disclosing parts of a signed JWT.

Consent and Claims

Learn how consent relates to claims in the authorization process.

What is a Claims Authority?

A brief overview of what a claims authority is and what role it plays in the process of issuing claims.

Centralizing Identity Data

An enterprise has many clients that require data of a user's identity. How can the claims infrastructure be used to sustain all parts of an organization?

Scopes, Claims and the Client

This article breaks down the different aspects of claims and scopes from a client perspective. We discuss tokens and claims, requesting and receiving claims.

Using Claims in APIs

Learn how to create a claims-based architecture for APIs and microservices.

Designing Claims

This article provides an overview of the claims ontology. Scopes, claims, tokens and how they are related in the authentication system.

Scopes Explained

Learn what scopes are, their role in authorization, and how to handle them properly as well as the difference between OAuth scopes and OpenID Connect scopes.

Claims Explained

When designing a token-based architecture, it's vital to know how identity data is handled in the system. Learn how Claims are used during authentication.