Simplifying Authorization at Scale: The Importance of DevOps Workflows with Flexible, Scalable, and Secure Access Control

DevOps has transformed how developers build, deploy, and manage infrastructure and applications, making automation, scalability, and rapid iteration core to modern development workflows.

While much of the software delivery process has evolved, authorization has largely remained stuck in legacy approaches. Many organizations still manage homegrown solutions with hardcoded permissions across services, custom policies by different teams, and manual updates as access needs shift. These approaches may work initially, but they do not scale properly.

As teams adopt microservices, APIs, and multi-cloud architectures, fragmented authorization systems become a liability. Each policy change demands manual effort across teams and services—slowing development, increasing the risk of misconfigurations, and eroding confidence in access control.

Why Traditional Authorization Models Fall Short

Many homegrown solutions, such as Duolingo’s previous authorization system, were built to solve immediate needs. Early-stage architectures often rely on simple approaches like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) or Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). These models are easy to implement, making them appealing when rapid development is the priority.

However, as companies scale, these simple models quickly show their limits. Real-world applications rarely stay static. Instead, teams need a blend of authorization models to address growing complexity—supporting multi-tenant architectures, managing resource-specific roles, handling user relationships, and enforcing contextual permissions that shift based on factors like time, ownership, or evolving business rules.

As requirements evolve, this leads to custom logic, scattered exceptions, and manual interventions. The once simple authorization tool becomes fragile, inconsistent, and a bottleneck in the development lifecycle.

The Role of Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service

To overcome the challenges of fragmented, manual access control, modern DevOps teams are adopting solutions with the same principles that transformed infrastructure and application delivery into the world of authorization. Two complementary approaches are emerging as the go-to strategies:

• Applying DevOps best practices through Policy-as-Code (PaC).
• Reducing operational overhead with Authorization-as-a-Service (AaaS).

Just as DevOps streamlined infrastructure through automation and version control, PaC and AaaS now deliver the same agility and consistency to authorization.

Policy-as-Code: Authorization Meets DevOps

Policy-as-Code (PaC) is the practice of defining and managing authorization policies in a declarative, code-like format—version-controlled, testable, and integrated into automated workflows. PaC is typically implemented in a domain-specific language or configuration format. By applying core DevOps principles, PaC transforms authorization from a manual, error-prone task into a streamlined, reliable component of software delivery.

Authorization-as-a-Service: Scalable Enforcement Without the Overhead

However, defining policies is only one part of the solution. Teams also need a scalable, reliable way to enforce these policies across their distributed systems and applications. That's where Authorization-as-a-Service (AaaS) comes in, providing managed, cloud-native platforms that handle policy enforcement without requiring teams to maintain their own authorization infrastructure.

Modern authorization solutions combine these two approaches:

• Declarative policies (PaC) that ensure transparency, audit-ability, and easier collaboration.
• Scalable, hosted decision engines (AaaS) that consistently enforce policies across microservices, APIs, and multi-cloud environments.

This powerful combination enables DevOps teams to rapidly adapt to changing business requirements, ensuring consistent authorization enforcement without slowing down development or adding operational complexity.

This overview highlights the reasons behind many companies' shift to Authorization-as-a-Service for complex authorization use cases.

Best Practices for Modern Authorization

Successfully implementing Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service requires adopting certain best practices that align closely with DevOps methodologies.

Key practices include:

• Decouple authorization logic from application code. Centralize policies to avoid duplication, reduce drift, and simplify maintenance across services.
• Use declarative policies to standardize access control. Focus on what access is allowed, not how it’s enforced.
• Choose platforms that:
  • Support flexible authorization models to handle evolving business requirements without constant rewrites.
  • Integrate seamlessly with CI/CD workflows for automated testing, deployment, and version control of policies.
  • Provide scalable, managed enforcement through AaaS. Eliminate operational overhead while ensuring consistent policy decisions across distributed systems.
• Model for growth and complexity. Start simple, but ensure your solution can adapt to non-standard use cases, dynamic relationships, and contextual permissions as your application scales.
• Ensure observability and compliance by tracking policy changes, enabling peer reviews, and integrating authorization with monitoring and telemetry to maintain full visibility and audit readiness.

This POC framework offers practical steps for evaluating authorization solutions that align with both Policy-as-Code and Authorization-as-a-Service strategies.

Conclusion: The Future is Flexible, Automated Authorization

Modern authorization can no longer rely on static roles, hardcoded logic, or manual processes. As architectures become more dynamic and distributed, effective access control demands both code-driven policies and scalable enforcement models.

For most companies, building and maintaining a custom authorization system isn’t an investment, it is a long-term liability. When authorization isn’t core to your product’s value, investing engineering resources into homegrown solutions distracts from your main focus. Teams need solutions that integrate seamlessly into development workflows and scale as business needs evolve.

By embracing an authorization service based on Policy-as-Code (PaC) and Authorization-as-a-Service (AaaS), teams bring automation, flexibility, and consistency to authorization. This ensures that access management evolves seamlessly alongside their DevOps workflows. This approach not only strengthens security but also removes operational bottlenecks, allowing development teams to move faster without sacrificing control.