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Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide · Lesson

Method Security with SpEL and Custom Voters

Enforce fine-grained access using @PreAuthorize, SpEL expressions, and custom authorization logic.

Why Method Security?

URL-based security (HttpSecurity matchers) guards entry points, but it cannot see the arguments a method receives or the object it returns. Method security closes that gap by enforcing rules right at the service layer.

  • Defense in depth — protection survives even if a controller forgets a check.
  • Fine-grained — decide based on parameters, return values, and the authenticated principal.
  • Reusable — the same secured service can be called from REST, GraphQL, or a message listener and stays protected.

In this lesson we enforce access with @PreAuthorize, SpEL expressions, and a custom authorization manager.

Enabling Method Security

In Spring Boot 4 / Spring Security 6, method security is opt-in. Add @EnableMethodSecurity to a configuration class. It activates the annotations through an AOP proxy.

  • prePostEnabled defaults to true — @PreAuthorize and @PostAuthorize work out of the box.
  • Set securedEnabled = true for the legacy @Secured, or jsr250Enabled = true for @RolesAllowed.

Note: the old @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity is removed — always use @EnableMethodSecurity.

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.method.configuration.EnableMethodSecurity;

@Configuration
@EnableMethodSecurity
public class MethodSecurityConfig {
    // prePostEnabled = true by default
    // @PreAuthorize / @PostAuthorize now active
}

All lessons in this course

  1. Resource Server JWT Validation and Claims
  2. OAuth2 Client and Authorization Code Flow
  3. Method Security with SpEL and Custom Voters
  4. Opaque Token Introspection and Token Exchange
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