If Spring Security is on the classpath then web applications will be secure by default with “basic” authentication on all HTTP endpoints. To add method-level security to a web application you can also add @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity with your desired settings. Additional information can be found in the Spring Security Reference.

The default AuthenticationManager has a single user (username “user” and password random, printed at INFO level when the application starts up). You can change the password by providing a security.user.password. This and other useful properties are externalized via SecurityProperties (properties prefix "security").

The default security configuration is implemented in SecurityAutoConfiguration and in the classes imported from there (SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration for web security and AuthenticationManagerConfiguration for authentication configuration which is also relevant in non-web applications). To switch off the Boot default configuration completely in a web application you can add a bean with @EnableWebSecurity. To customize it you normally use external properties and beans of type WebConfigurerAdapter (e.g. to add form-based login). There are several secure applications in the Spring Boot samples to get you started with common use cases.

The basic features you get out of the box in a web application are:

All of the above can be switched on and off or modified using external properties (security.*).

If the Actuator is also in use, you will find:

The Actuator security features can be modified using external properties (management.security.*).