The Trivy Compromise: The Fallacy Of Secrets Management And The Case For Workload Identity
Security Boulevard, Monday, March 23rd, 2026
JWT and OAuth show up together in nearly every authentication system, which is why engineers often treat them as interchangeable. They are not. OAuth is an authorization framework that defines how to grant access. JWT is a token format that defines how to package and transmit claims.
They solve different problems, and most production systems use both.
The confusion between them leads to real security gaps, especially in machine-to-machine communication, where workloads cannot use browser logins or MFA prompts. Understanding where JWT ends and OAuth begins is the first step toward implementing workload authentication correctly.