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AWS WAF vs Amazon Cognito: What are the differences?
## AWS WAF vs Amazon Cognito
AWS WAF and Amazon Cognito are both services offered by Amazon Web Services, yet they serve different purposes and cater to different needs in the cloud computing landscape. Below are the key differences between the two:
1. **Functionality**: AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) primarily focuses on protecting web applications from common web exploits by filtering and monitoring HTTP/HTTPS traffic. On the other hand, Amazon Cognito is an identity management service that provides user authentication and authorization for mobile and web applications. While AWS WAF secures web applications, Amazon Cognito manages user identities.
2. **Use Case**: AWS WAF is commonly used to protect against common web exploits such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other security threats at the application layer. In contrast, Amazon Cognito is often used to incorporate user sign-up, sign-in, and account management functionalities into applications, providing a seamless user experience across multiple devices.
3. **Integration**: AWS WAF can be seamlessly integrated with other AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront, AWS Application Load Balancer, and Amazon API Gateway to protect applications at scale. Amazon Cognito, on the other hand, integrates with external identity providers such as Google, Facebook, and Apple to offer social identity federation and seamless user authentication across platforms.
4. **Data Management**: While both services handle user data, they do so in different ways. Amazon Cognito securely stores user profile data and manages user authentication tokens for access control. In comparison, AWS WAF is focused on filtering and monitoring web traffic based on pre-configured rules and conditions to prevent malicious attacks.
5. **Scalability**: AWS WAF is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of web traffic, allowing organizations to protect their web applications effectively as traffic grows. Amazon Cognito provides scalable authentication and user management capabilities, making it easy to manage thousands to millions of users as applications scale.
In Summary, AWS WAF focuses on protecting web applications from common web exploits by filtering and monitoring HTTP/HTTPS traffic, while Amazon Cognito provides user authentication and authorization services for mobile and web applications, managing user identities and authentication tokens securely.
Decisions about Amazon Cognito and AWS WAF
Brent Maxwell
CEO at DEFY Labs · | 4 upvotes · 290.8K views
I started our team on Amazon Cognito because I was a Solutions Architect at AWS and found it really easy to follow the tutorials and get a basic app up and running with it.
When our team started working with it, they very quickly became frustrated because of the poor documentation. After 4 days of trying to get all the basic passwordless auth working, our lead engineer made the decision to abandon it and try Auth0... and managed to get everything implemented in 4 hours.
The consensus was that Cognito just isn't mature enough or well-documented, and that the implementation does not cater for real world use cases the way that it should. I believe Amplify has made some of this simpler, but I would still recommend Auth0 as it's been bulletproof for us, and is a sensible price.
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Learn MorePros of Amazon Cognito
Pros of AWS WAF
Pros of Amazon Cognito
- Backed by Amazon14
- Manage Unique Identities7
- Work Offline4
- MFA3
- Store and Sync2
- Free for first 50000 users1
- It works1
- Integrate with Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, SAML1
- SDKs and code samples1
Pros of AWS WAF
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Cons of Amazon Cognito
Cons of AWS WAF
Cons of Amazon Cognito
- Massive Pain to get working4
- Documentation often out of date3
- Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation)2
- Docs are vast but mostly useless1
- MFA: there is no "forget device" function1
- Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble)1
- Lacks many basic features1
- There is no "Logout" method in the API1
- Different Language SDKs not compatible1
- No recovery codes for MFA1
- Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes1
- Only paid support1
Cons of AWS WAF
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What is Amazon Cognito?
You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline.
What is AWS WAF?
AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.
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What companies use Amazon Cognito?
What companies use AWS WAF?
What companies use Amazon Cognito?
What companies use AWS WAF?
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What tools integrate with Amazon Cognito?
What tools integrate with AWS WAF?
What tools integrate with Amazon Cognito?
What tools integrate with AWS WAF?
No integrations found
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What are some alternatives to Amazon Cognito and AWS WAF?
Auth0
A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
Okta
Connect all your apps in days, not months, with instant access to thousands of pre-built integrations - even add apps to the network yourself. Integrations are easy to set up, constantly monitored, proactively repaired and handle authentication and provisioning.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
AWS IAM
It enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Using IAM, you can create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources.
Keycloak
It is an Open Source Identity and Access Management For Modern Applications and Services. It adds authentication to applications and secure services with minimum fuss. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. It's all available out of the box.