Cerbos Newsletter [14 Sept 2022]

Hello from Cerbos!

Our September newsletter includes:

Upgrades to Cerbos

v0.20 of Cerbos

The latest release of Cerbos, v0.20, includes improvements in unit testing with dates, better wildcard support, a SQLAlchemy adapter, some SDK updates and several UX updates to the Playground.

Writing policy tests for policies that have time-based conditions is now easier because the value returned by the now function can be fixed for the entire test suite or individual tests. This also influences the timeSince calculations and gives you the ability to write deterministic tests to ensure that your logic is sound. See the policy testing documentation to learn more. Also, an overly strict validation rule that prevented single wildcards from being used for resource names in principal policies has been relaxed. You can find the full release notes here.

JavaScript SDK - Admin API

Support for the Admin API has been added to the Javascript SDK which makes it simpler to manage policies programmatically if you are making use of a mutable storage engine such as Postgres, MySQL, or SQLServer. Our other SDKs will also be updated in time.

Playground: Scope support, .NET and PHP snippets

The Cerbos Playground now includes an improved experience when working with scoped policies. it is now possible to set the scope on any resource or principal right in the editor - try it out here. Additionally, .NET and PHP code snippets are now generated directly in the playground for you to quickly and simply get up and running with Cerbos.

Ecosystem: NestJS Integration

Expanding on our growing ecosystem of integrations, we have added a reference project for using Cerbos to power authorization in a NestJS application. This article outlines the approach and how to use Cerbos as a guard on routes.

Ecosystem: SQLAlchemy

For Python developers who are using an ORM, Object Relational Mapper, to access their data storage layer without having to manipulate SQL in their code, SQLAlchemy has been the most popular choice. SQLAlchemy can now leverage Cerbos’ awareness of permissions when fetching data. Developers no longer have to manipulate data access permissions into their queries.

Blog highlights

Adding authorization to a GraphQL server

One of the de facto standards of tackling how decoupled systems interact together is by building APIs. In recent years, GraphQL has gained popularity in developing web APIs. In this article, you'll learn about the best practices for implementing access control patterns in GraphQL APIs.

Why using GitOps for authorization and access control is a good idea

Getting developers working in harmony is no easy task. Tools like GitHub make it much easier to manage code, but as infrastructure and deployment become more complex, issues arise with the systems projects are built on. In this article, learn more about GitOps and see some use cases where it can make a big difference and how to use GitOps with Cerbos.

Authorization challenges in a multi-tenant system

Multi tenant applications allow several distinct groups of users to access a system. Most SaaS solutions use multi-tenancy to leverage a single instance of their technology to serve multiple organizations. Learn about the authorization problems that multi-tenancy creates in this article here. It’s important to understand these issues before starting to build a system, anticipating potential weaknesses and building adequate protections to address them.

Authorization in the context of SOC2 and other certifications

A cyberattack or a data breach can have a massive impact on an organization. If a business handles sensitive customer information, taking measures that will protect customers' data and proving that you value security as a top priority is essential. Find out how Cerbos can help you meet the requirements.

Industry news

Authorization at Netflix scale

Netflix shares how they have designed implemented and scaled authorization for their globally distributed systems. A number of models for access controls are covered in this talk as well an insight in how Netflix thinks about permissions across their platform.

Software Engineering Hype Cycle 2022

Gartner places DevSecOps at the plateau of productivity and microservices on its way out of the slope of disillusionment in its 2022 software engineering hype cycle; two concepts that are aligned to Cerbos' journey.