There are many authentication mechanisms (basic, digest, form, X.509, etc), and there are many storage options for credentials and authority information (in-memory, database, LDAP, etc). Authorization depends on authentication and determines if you have the required Authority. The decision process is often based on roles (e.g. ADMIN, MEMBER, GUEST, etc).

There are three steps to set up and configure Spring Security in a web environment:

1. Setup the filter chain: The implementation is a chain of Spring configured filters (Spring Boot does it automatically)
2. Configure security (authorization) rules
3. Setup Web Authentication

In the next example, it is defined as specific authorization restrictions for URLs using mvcMatchers.

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

 @Override
 protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
 http.formLogin().loginPage("/login").permitAll().and().exceptionHandling().accessDeniedPage("/denied").and()
 .authorizeRequests().mvcMatchers("/accounts/resources/**").permitAll().mvcMatchers("/accounts/edit*")
 .hasRole("EDITOR").mvcMatchers("/accounts/account*").hasAnyRole("VIEWER", "EDITOR")
 .mvcMatchers("/accounts/**").authenticated().and().logout().permitAll().logoutSuccessUrl("/");
 }

 @Autowired
 public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
 auth.inMemoryAuthentication().passwordEncoder(new StandardPasswordEncoder()).withUser("viewerUser")
 .password("abc").roles("VIEWER").and().withUser("editorUser").password("abc").roles("EDITOR");
 }

}

As you can see, you can chain multiple restrictions (using the and() method). The first method sets up a form-based authentication. The second method uses a UserDetailsManagerConfigurer. You can use jdbcAuthentication() instead of inMemoryAuthentication().

Learn more at Spring Security Reference