Configuring authorization with LDAP

This topic describes how to configure a message flow to perform authorization on an identity using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Before you begin

Before you can configure a message flow to perform authorization, you need to check that an appropriate security profile exists, or create a new security profile. See Creating a security profile for LDAP.

About this task

When LDAP is used for authorization, the integration node needs to determine whether the incoming username is a member of the given group. To do this, the integration node requires the following information:

To resolve the username to an LDAP entry, the integration node needs to know the base distinguished name (Base DN) of the accepted login IDs. This is required to enable the integration node to differentiate between different entries with the same name.
To get an entry list from a group name, the group name must be the distinguished name of the group, not just a common name. An LDAP search is made for the group, and the username is checked by finding an entry matching the distinguished name of the user.
If your LDAP directory does not permit login by unrecognized IDs, and does not grant search access rights on the subtree, you must set up a separate authorized login ID that the integration node can use for the search. Use the mqsisetdbparms command to specify a username and password:
```
mqsisetdbparms <INodeName> -n ldap::LDAP -u username -p password
```
or
```
mqsisetdbparms <INodeName> -n ldap::<servername> -u username -p password
```
where <servername> is your base LDAP server name. For example: ldap.mydomain.com.
If you specify ldap::LDAP, it creates a default setting for the integration node, which the integration node attempts to use if you have not explicitly used the mqsisetdbparms command to create a login ID for a specific <servername>. All servers that do not have an explicit ldap::servername entry then start using the credentials in the ldap::LDAP entry. This means that any servers that were previously using anonymous bind by default will start using the details in ldap::LDAP.
The username that you specify in the -u parameter must be recognized by the LDAP server as a complete user name. In most cases this means that you need to specify the full DN of the user. Alternatively, by specifying a username to be anonymous, you can force the integration node to bind anonymously to this LDAP server. This might be useful if you have specified a non-anonymous bind as your default (ldap::LDAP). For example:
```
mqsisetdbparms <INodeName> -n ldap::<servername> -u anonymous -p password
```
In this case, the value specified for password is ignored.

Steps for enabling LDAP authorization:

Procedure

To enable an existing message flow to perform authorization using LDAP, use the BAR editor to select a security profile that has authorization enabled.

You can set a security profile on a message flow or on individual input nodes. If no security profile is set for the input nodes, the setting is inherited from the setting on the message flow.

Switch to the Integration Development perspective.
In the Application Development view, right-click the BAR file and then click Open with > BAR Editor.
Click the Manage and Configure tab.
Click the flow or node on which you want to set the security profile.
The properties that you can configure for the message flow or for the node are displayed in the Properties view.
In the Security Profile Name field, select a security profile that uses LDAP for authorization.
Save the BAR file.

What to do next

For a SOAPInput node to use the identity in the WS-Security header (rather than an underlying transport identity) an appropriate policy set and bindings must also be defined and specified. For more information, see Policy sets.