[Support Guide] Can I use Identity to protect access to our site? Or functions? Or is it only for the CMS?

Last checked by Netlify Support Team on September 7, 2023

Yup! Identity is meant to be a complete authentication solution. When you log in you get access to a JWT (JSON Web Token) that can be used to:

  • authenticate requests on the edge, in the browser,
  • or authenticate inside of functions.

If you want more info on what you can do with Identity, check out our docs on that feature.

We’re all about lowering the barrier for entry to get you started with user authentication, but it can still be daunting! I know I had to do quite a bit of reading and testing to understand the different signing options, their pros, and cons, as well as knowing how best to secure your auth platform before I wrote this blog post on JWT and Identity. Let me know if it’s useful, and check out some of the other resources mentioned in that post as well as in the Identity section of these forums.

There are a bunch of use-cases for JWT’s, like authenticating requests inside of functions and on other services, so it’s worth going down the rabbit hole on this topic if you intend to provide different content to authenticated users in your app or on your pages.emphasized text

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