Micronaut Security Basics: A Beginner’s Guide to Securing Your Micronaut Applications

In the era of microservices and cloud-native applications, securing your APIs is no longer optional—it’s essential. Micronaut Security Basics gives you a head start in understanding how to secure your Micronaut-based applications using built-in features like JWT authentication, HTTP Basic Auth, and role-based authorization.

Micronaut provides a robust and extensible security module that integrates seamlessly with modern authentication and authorization standards. In this post, we’ll cover everything from configuration to implementation with real-world examples using the package com.kscodes.micronaut.security.

Micronaut Security Basics

🔐 What is Micronaut Security?

Micronaut Security is a built-in module for handling authentication, authorization, and user management within Micronaut applications. It supports a variety of security mechanisms, including:

  • HTTP Basic Authentication
  • JWT (JSON Web Token)
  • OAuth2/OpenID Connect
  • LDAP
  • Session-based Auth

It’s lightweight, fast, and ideal for microservice architectures.

🔧 Getting Started with Micronaut Security

1. Add Security Dependencies

Update your build.gradle or pom.xml to include Micronaut Security:

For Maven:

⚙️ Basic Security Configuration

Create application.yml:

👤 Creating a Simple Authentication Controller

com.kscodes.micronaut.security.AuthController.java

👥 Custom Authentication Provider

com.kscodes.micronaut.security.BasicAuthProvider.java

🔒 Securing Endpoints with Role-Based Access

com.kscodes.micronaut.security.AdminController.java

🧪 Testing the Flow

  1. Login with /auth/login using:

Use JWT token from the response to access /admin/dashboard.

Unauthorized users will get 403 Forbidden.

📌 Best Practices

  • Store secrets securely (e.g., Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).
  • Use HTTPS in production.
  • Implement token expiration and refresh mechanisms.
  • Integrate OAuth2 or external IdPs for scalable authentication.

📚 External References

✅ Conclusion

Micronaut Security Basics provide a clean and efficient way to secure your services. With built-in support for JWT and role-based access, you can protect your endpoints with minimal configuration. The com.kscodes.micronaut.security package shown here is a great starting point to build scalable, secure applications.

Whether you’re building REST APIs or microservices, understanding Micronaut Security will give your applications the foundational layer of protection they need.