OAuth
A standard that lets an app act on a user’s account elsewhere (mail, calendar, files) without ever seeing the password.
The user signs in at the provider and approves scopes; the app gets a token limited to those scopes, which can be revoked. OAuth 2.0 handles authorization; OpenID Connect adds identity on top for “Sign in with…”. Sensitive scopes such as reading Gmail require the provider’s app verification, sometimes with a security assessment.
Related terms
- SSO (single sign-on): Logging in once with a company account (Microsoft, Google, Okta) to use many apps, managed centrally by IT.
- CASA (Cloud Application Security Assessment): The security assessment based on OWASP ASVS that Google requires for apps using restricted scopes, such as Gmail data.
- CSP (Content Security Policy): An HTTP header that tells the browser which scripts, styles and connections a page may use, limiting the damage of injected code.
