How to Make Authentication Easier with Amazon Cognito?

There is no doubt that authentication is a critical aspect of software development, especially in Windows application development. It has been discussed multiple times from the recent Coding Bootcamp webinars. Its core function is to protect user information from unauthorized access and potential breaches. In addition to that, authentication also helps ensure that only legitimate users can interact with the application, reducing the risk of tampering or malicious actions that could compromise the application’s integrity.

What is Amazon Cognito?

In this video from Coding Bootcamp 2023, we will be introduced to Amazon Cognito and how it can make Authentication a lot easier. Amazon Cognito is described as an identity platform for web and mobile apps. It’s a user directory, an authentication server, and an authorization service for OAuth 2.0 access tokens and AWS credentials. Applications, especially those with a potential for high user engagement, require an authentication system that can handle millions of users seamlessly. Amazon Cognito excels in this area by providing automatic scaling capabilities, ensuring reliable performance regardless of user load. This scalability is critical for applications expecting rapid growth or sudden spikes in user activity.

In this session, Richard Hatherall will demonstrate the core features of Amazon Cognito, including its User Pools and Identity Pools. User Pools provide a secure user directory that can scale to accommodate hundreds of millions of users while Identity Pools allow for the creation of unique identities for users authenticated through various identity providers.

In order to integrate the authentication services into your application using Delphi, the video will also highlight Appercept’s AWS SDK for Delphi, a high-quality SDK designed to integrate Amazon Web Services into Delphi applications easily. The SDK also assists with deploying applications built in Delphi to run on AWS infrastrucure by integrating with platform services just like the official SDKs provided by Amazon for other languages.

To learn more about Amazon Cognito, feel free to watch the video below.