Role-Based Authentication and Session Management Portal

Authentication is the front door of every web application, and it is where real products most often fail: weak password storage, broken session handling, and missing authorization checks are perennial causes of breaches. This project has the intern build that front door properly, as a complete, security-first authentication system rather than a bolted-on afterthought. The intern implements user registration and login on an Express and Node.js backend with MongoDB, hashing passwords with a modern algorithm and issuing JWT-based sessions that the frontend consumes safely. Role-based access control distinguishes ordinary users from administrators, protecting sensitive routes on both the API and the Next.js, React, and TypeScript frontend, which provides polished, Tailwind-styled flows for sign-up, sign-in, and account management. The project emphasizes the details that separate secure systems from vulnerable ones: token expiry and refresh, input validation, and defense against common attacks on auth endpoints. Completing it gives the intern a working reference implementation of web security best practices and the ability to explain, concretely, how modern applications keep user identity and sessions safe.