Although the gateway does not strictly require the authentication of requests, the default policy set requires bearer token authentication.

To support this approach, the gateway uses the configured access token validators to evaluate bearer tokens that are included in incoming requests. The result of that validation is supplied to the policy request in the HttpRequest.AccessToken attribute, and the user identity associated with the token is provided in the TokenOwner attribute.

Policies use this authentication information to affect the processing of requests and responses. For example, a policy in the default policy set requires that all requests are made with an active access token.

Rule: Deny if HttpRequest.AccessToken.active Equals false

Advice:
  Code: denied-reason
  Applies To: Deny
  Payload: {"status":401, "message": "invalid_token", "detail":"Access token is expired or otherwise invalid"}

Gateway API Endpoints include the following configuration properties to specify the manner in which they handle authentication.

Property Description
http-auth-evaluation-behavior Determines whether the Gateway API Endpoint evaluates bearer tokens, and if so, whether the bearer token is forwarded to the API server.
access-token-validator Sets the access token validators that the Gateway API Endpoint uses. By default, this property has no value, and the Gateway API Endpoint can evaluate every bearer token by using each access token validator that is configured on the server. To constrain the set of access token validators that a Gateway API Endpoint uses, set this property to use one or more specific values.

If http-auth-evaluation-behavior is set to do-not-evaluate, this setting is ignored.