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Simple WebSphere authentication mechanism (deprecated)

The Simple WebSphere authentication mechanism (SWAM) defines rules about security information and the format of how security information is stored in both credentials and tokens. SWAM is intended for simple, non-distributed, single application server runtime environments.

SWAM was deprecated in WebSphere Application Server v8.5 and will be removed in a future release.

The single application server restriction is due to the fact that SWAM does not support forwardable credentials. If a servlet or enterprise bean in application server process 1, invokes a remote method on an enterprise bean living in another application server process 2, the identity of the caller identity in process 1 is not transmitted to server process 2. What is transmitted is an unauthenticated credential, which, depending on the security permissions configured on the EJB methods, can cause authorization failures.

Because SWAM is intended for a single application server process, SSO is not supported.

The SWAM authentication mechanism is suitable for simple environments, software development environments, or other environments that do not require a distributed security solution.

Related tasks

Select an authentication mechanism

Authenticating users