In the past, it was often necessary to embed credentials into an application and then develop complex systems to ensure that users only had access to their own data. For example, an application might need a key to obtain a token to access an API, a username and password to retrieve a user’s account from that API, and yet another set of credentials to call a service to read and write data. For this, the developer has to deal with heavy coding for the security and authentication. Amazon Cognito addresses these difficulties and allows developers to concentrate more on application development let’s see how.
Amazon Cognito is an Amazon Web Service (AWS) product which controls the user authentication and user access for mobile applications over various devices. It is a service that makes it easy to save mobile user data, such as app preferences or game state, in the AWS Cloud without writing any backend code or managing any infrastructure that helps the developer to concentrate on writing code instead of building and managing the requisite back-end infrastructure. Amazon Cognito works with Social identity providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon as well as external identity providers that support SAML or OpenID Connect. Developers can use Amazon Cognito Identity to add sign-up and sign-in to their apps and to enable their users to securely access their application’s assets. Cognito also enables developers to synchronize data across multiple devices, platforms, and applications. For an example you built a gaming application with a few levels. Your end users is likely to get frustrated if they have to beat the same levels over & again, when they change to another device. To fix this, you need to synchronize different devices to the same level they are on using Amazon Cognito so they can continue where they left off.
Here Are Different Advantages of Amazon Cognito for Developer:
User Pools
By using Amazon Cognito, User Pools developer can create and manage user directory and can add sign-up and sign-in to the user’s mobile application. User pools scale to millions of users and are designed to provide simple, secure, and low-cost options for developer. Developers can likewise implement improved security elements, such as email and phone number verification, and multi-factor authentication.
OpenidConnect
OpenID Connect is an open standard for identity validation. You can now use Amazon Cognito to create unique identifiers and receive temporary AWS credentials with any OIDC-compatible provider. This feature significantly expands the universe of identity providers you can leverage with Amazon Cognito to securely access your AWS assets. It makes easier to follow security best practices at AWS by supporting for OIDC identity providers, along with developer authenticated identities.
Push Synchronize
By using Amazon Cognito you can synchronize your data when it is changed in the cloud, to make your customers’ experience completely consistent across multiple devices. Amazon Cognito uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) to send a push notification, and alert all the devices connected to a Cognito identity of a data change. This enables your application to synchronize the changes made in the cloud sync, without having to check store manually every time.
Amazon Cognito Sync
Amazon Cognito Sync supports offline access and cross-device syncing of application-related user’s information. You can also use the Amazon Cognito Sync service to save profile information for a user and make it effortlessly accessible from all the platforms supported by your application.
Federated Identities
Federated Identities enables the developer to make unique identities for their users and verify them with federated identity providers. With a federated identity, a developer can get temporary or limited-benefits using AWS credentials to synchronize the data with Amazon Cognito Sync. It supports federated identity providers such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and OpenID Connect.
Secure user login is an important part of any mobile application. By using Amazon Cognito in your Mobile applications, you can use a consistent, cross-platform identifier for your end-users authentication. Amazon Cognito service is a user identity and data synchronization solution that helps to safely manage and synchronize application data for the users across their mobile devices. It enables synchronization of data across a user’s different devices so that their application experience remains consistent when they switch between devices or upgrade to a new device. Build up a mobile application incorporated with Amazon Cognito into your apps to provide a consistent experience for your end users by hiring Mobile app developers, experts can develop a backend infrastructure to manage your user’s data, authentication and states.
