This fast-paced course introduces the Java web developer to the Spring Security framework. The first half of the course gives an overview and quickly moves into practical exercises in basic usage: XML configuration for authentication and URL-based authorization. Then we start to dig into Spring Security as a Java model, and develop advanced techniques including custom user realms, custom authorization constraints, method-based authorization, and instance-based authorization.

By the end of the course students will be able to use Spring security to implement authentication and role-based authorization policies for their own Java web applications (whether or not those applications use Spring themselves), and customize the behavior of Spring Security to their requirements.

Note that, in this short time frame, the course does not give much background on general web-application security -- for example, pros and cons of HTTP BASIC, DIGEST, and form-based authentication strategies, or what a session-fixation attack actually is. Rather, it is focused on the Spring Security library and what we can do with it. For a complete treatment of web security, consider pairing this course with Course "Securing Java Web Applications."

Java Training Prerequisites

• Java programming course is excellent preparation.
• Basic knowledge of XML.
• Some servlets and/or JSP experience will be beneficial for purposes of understanding the impact of each security feature that we configure. There is no web-application coding involved in the course.
• Experience with the Spring framework is strongly recommended. This course offers an optional "Chapter 0" briefing on features of Spring that are essential to Spring Security; but full coverage of this chapter will come at the expense of some of the later material in the course.