Adding Social Identity Federation to AWS Cognito: Differentiating Identity Pools and Federated Identity Providers

AWS Cognito Identity Pools vs. Federated Identity Providers

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Question

You have designed an application that uses AWS resources, such as S3, to operate and store users' documents.

You currently use Cognito identity pools and user pools.

To increase usage and ease of signing up, you decide that adding social identity federation is the best path forward. How would you differentiate the Cognito identity pool and the federated identity providers (e.g., Google)?

Answers

A. They are the same and just called different things.

B. First, you sign-in via Cognito then through a federated site, like Google.

C. Federated identity providers and identity pools are used to authenticate services.

D. You can choose a federated identity provider to authenticate users and associate a Cognito identity pool to authorize the users.

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Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer - D.

Option D is correct.

Federated identity providers are used to authenticate users.

Then the Cognito identity pool provides the temporary token that authorizes users to access AWS resources.

Option A is incorrect.

Cognito identity pool and the federated identity providers are separate, independent authentication methods.

Option B is incorrect.

Only one log-in event is needed, not two.

Option C is incorrect.

Identity providers authenticate users, not authenticate services.

For more information, refer to the following URLs:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/cognito-user-pools-identity-federation.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_providers_oidc.html https://aws.amazon.com/articles/web-identity-federation-with-mobile-applications/ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/cognito-getting-started.html

When it comes to identity and access management (IAM) in AWS, Cognito is a powerful tool. Cognito allows developers to create and manage user authentication for web and mobile applications.

Cognito User Pools are user directories that provide sign-up and sign-in options for your app users. It is the Cognito User Pool that handles the authentication of users' credentials such as their email and password.

Cognito Identity Pools, on the other hand, allow your users to obtain temporary AWS credentials to access AWS services such as S3, DynamoDB, and more. These temporary credentials are obtained after a user successfully authenticates with a federated identity provider.

Federated identity providers are third-party services that allow users to authenticate using their existing identities. These could be social identity providers like Google, Facebook, or Amazon, or enterprise identity providers such as Microsoft Active Directory.

When using Cognito with federated identity providers, users can sign in using their Google or Facebook credentials, and then obtain temporary AWS credentials from Cognito Identity Pools. This means that users can access AWS resources without having to create separate AWS credentials.

Therefore, the correct answer to the question is D. You can choose a federated identity provider to authenticate users and associate a Cognito identity pool to authorize the users.

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