Authenticating users

The process of authenticating users involves a user registry and an authentication mechanism. Optionally, you can define trust between WebSphere® Application Server and a proxy server, configure single sign-on capability, and specify how to propagate security attributes between application servers.

About this task

The following security topics are covered in this section:

User registries: For information on local operating system, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), custom user registries, and user repositories such as virtual member manager, see Selecting a registry or repository.
Trust associations: For more information on trust associations, see Trust associations.
Single sign-on: For more information on single sign-on, see Single sign-on for authentication using LTPA cookies.
Security attribute propagation: For more information on propagation tokens, authorization tokens, single sign-on tokens, and authentication tokens, see Security attribute propagation.

The following information is covered in this section:

Procedure

Configure a user registry.
For more information, see Selecting a registry or repository.
Configure WebSEAL or a custom trust association interceptor.
For more information see, Integrating third-party HTTP reverse proxy servers.
Configure single sign-on.
For more information, see Implementing single sign-on to minimize web user authentications.
Propagate security attributes.
For more information, see Propagating security attributes among application servers.
Configure the authentication cache.
For more information, see Configuring the authentication cache.

What to do next

After completing the configuring the authentication process, you must authorize access to resources. For more information, see Authorizing access to resources.