AWS API Gateway is a fully managed AWS service that makes it easy to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure REST APIs at any scale. API Gateway lets you plug in custom Lambda authorizers to enforce custom access control logic at the edge. These serverless Lambda functions validate incoming requests using tokens, JWTs, or any custom scheme you define. Combining Lambda authorizers with API Gateway’s built-in caching can achieve robust security and low-latency performance for your APIs.
In this Cloud Lab, you’ll build a secure REST API Gateway endpoint with custom Lambda authorizers and enable caching for improved performance. You’ll create authorizers with two different authorization mechanisms: a token-based authorizer and a JWT-based authorizer, then integrate them with your REST API methods to enforce security at the edge. You’ll also practice testing endpoints under valid and invalid conditions to ensure your API correctly handles authorized and unauthorized access.
Below is the high-level architecture diagram of the infrastructure you’ll create in this Cloud Lab:
