What is the difference between a JWE and an encrypted JWT?

[raketmakhim]

I have seen apigee can decrypt an encrypted JWT but cannot decrypt a JWE. I Thought they were the same thing. What is the difference? 

[dchiesa1 · Accepted solution]

Last week I wrote up a detailed description: https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Apigee/Payload-encryption-with-JWE/m-p/408153/highlight/true... 

Basically, JWE is a way to wrap encryption around anything.  While "encrypted JWT" is a way to wrap encryption around a specific thing: a JSON payload. 

Apigee can handle, with out of the box policies, encrypted JWT, with a variety of algorithms. 

Apigee out of the box policies do not handle the general case JWE. For that, there is a Java callout, which handles specifically RSA-based encryption algorithms. If you want general-case JWE and non-RSA algorithms, there's no support for that currently in Apigee, though it is in the roadmap.