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Google Cloud Consent screens and the impact of administrative controls

When users sign in to an application that uses Google OAuth or OpenID Connect, they typically see a consent screen. But there’s more than one type of consent screen, and the type of consent screen that users end up seeing not only depends on the publisher, but also on the administrative controls applied on the consumer side Continue »

Windows Using Integrated Windows Authentication over a Google Cloud load balancer

Modern web applications typically use OAuth or OpenID Connect to authenticate users, but older intranet applications often still rely on Integrated Windows Authentication to deliver a single sign-on experience for users. When we migrate such an application to Google Cloud, we must be careful to choose the right load balancer, otherwise authentication might fail in subtle ways. Continue »

Google Cloud All access tokens aren't created equal

Whenever we want to call a Google or Google Cloud API, we need an access token. But there’s more than one way to obtain an access token, and depending on which way we use, the resulting access token might behave a little differently. What kinds of access tokens are there, and how do they differ? Continue »

Google Cloud New documentation and tool support for authenticating to Google Cloud from an Active Directory environment

When an on-premises application needs to access Google Cloud, it’s tempting to just let it use a service account key. But if the application runs in an Active Directory environment, there’s a better alternative – we can let it use its domain credentials and “exchange” them against Google credentials. That doesn’t even require custom code anymore. Continue »

JIT Access JIT Access 1.1 now supports inherited roles and has a new UI

With Just-in-Time Access, we can implement just-in-time privileged access management on Google Cloud by allowing users to temporarily elevate their access to certain projects. But a key limitation of the initial release of JIT Access was that it didn’t support inherited role bindings. Version 1.1 removes this limitation and features a new UI. Continue »

Google Cloud Which project's quota are my API calls charged against?

Any call we make against a Google API is charged against a project quota. Depending on the API that we’re using, that project quota might limit the frequency of calls, the total number of calls, or even the number of calls per user. But which project’s quota is it that’s being charged? Continue »

Google Cloud Dealing with partial consent in Google OAuth clients

When we use a tool like gcloud or IAP Desktop for the first time, we need to authorize it. Google Sign-in then shows us a consent screen that lists all the things the tool might do on our behalf, and we can decide whether to consent or deny. But sometimes, we get a third option. Continue »