Security is the most important part of your backend. Choosing the right authentication strategy is vital for protecting user data.
1. JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
- Concept: Stateless tokens that contain user data and a signature.
- Pros: Scalable, work across domains, no database lookup required.
- Cons: Difficult to revoke, can become large if too much data is added.
2. Server-Side Sessions
- Concept: State is stored on the server (often in Redis), and a session ID is sent to the user.
- Pros: Easy to revoke, very secure, low overhead on the client.
- Cons: Requires a centralized data store to scale.
3. OAuth2 / OpenID Connect
- Concept: The industry standard for third-party auth (Login with Google/GitHub).
- Pros: Users don't need to create new passwords, highly secure.
- Cons: Complex to implement correctly.
The 2026 Recommendation:
Use OAuth2 for social logins and JWTs with Refresh Tokens for your mobile/web apps. Ensure your JWTs are short-lived and stored securely in HttpOnly cookies.