Exploring the Pros and Cons of Simple JWT (JSON Web Tokens)

If you're working with authentication and authorization, you've likely encountered JWTs in your projects. Here's a quick breakdown.

Pros

1. Stateless and scalable — JWTs are stateless, which means no need for server-side storage. They're easily scalable in distributed systems.
2. Compact and efficient — being compact in size, JWTs are efficient for transmitting data between parties, making them ideal for web applications.
3. Standardized — JWTs follow a standard, making them interoperable across different platforms and languages.
4. Security — when implemented correctly, JWTs can enhance security by providing a way to verify the integrity of the information.

Cons

1. No revocation mechanism — once issued, it's challenging to revoke a JWT. If a token is compromised, it remains valid until it expires.
2. Size — while compact, JWTs can become large if they carry a significant amount of information, potentially impacting network performance.
3. Limited built-in encryption — JWTs have built-in signature verification, but they lack built-in encryption for the payload. Additional measures may be needed for sensitive data.
4. Token bloat — as more information is added to the token, there's a risk of "token bloat," where the token becomes unwieldy.

My take

Use short-lived access tokens with refresh token rotation, keep payloads minimal, and never put sensitive data inside a JWT payload — signed is not encrypted.