Jens Langhammer
- Wrote the first commit of authentik in November 2018 as a personal project
- Built it into a full open-source identity provider and founded a company around it in 2022
Bio
Jens Langhammer started authentik in Hamburg in November 2018 as a personal project and grew it into a self-hosted identity provider covering single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, provisioning, and access control. Authentik Security, the public benefit company built around it, followed in 2022.
Profile built from public project and company records.
Where their work shows up
authentik's distinguishing idea is the configurable flow: login, enrollment, recovery, and consent are stages a deployment composes rather than fixed screens, which is what homelabs and enterprises both end up needing for different reasons. It is one of the few projects that made the jump from one person's side project to production infrastructure for organizations that could have bought a commercial product. See the authentik profile and the open-source identity vendors.
Related on Start with Identity
- CVEFortiCloud SSO SAML bypass on FortiOS, FortiProxy, FortiSwitchManager
A crafted SAML message bypasses FortiCloud SSO (CWE-347). Arctic Wolf saw malicious logins three days after disclosure. CISA added it to KEV on 16 December 2025
- CVEFortinet follow-on SSO SAML bypass after the 59718 patch
A second FortiCloud SSO SAML bypass that hits devices already patched for CVE-2025-59718 and CVE-2025-59719. Actively exploited. CISA guidance 28 January 2026.
- CVEFortiWeb FortiCloud SSO SAML bypass
The FortiWeb twin of CVE-2025-59718. A crafted SAML message bypasses FortiCloud SSO on FortiWeb. Same CWE-347 class, same December 2025 window, same 'patch or d
- GlossaryIdentity Federation
A trust relationship between identity providers and service providers that lets users authenticate once at their home IdP and access applications at the other p
- GlossarySAML 2.0
Security Assertion Markup Language. An XML-based protocol for federated authentication, dominant in enterprise SSO. Largely superseded by OIDC for new deploymen
- ExpertAuthor of pysaml2 and pyoidc
Roland Hedberg has worked in the research and education community since 1987. He wrote pysaml2, the Python [SAML 2.0](/standards/saml-2-0/) implementation still