Definition and purpose of authentication

Authentication is the process of identifying an individual process or entity that is attempting to log in to a secure domain. Requests for protected resources by unauthenticated users always result in an authentication challenge.

• WebSEAL provides several built-in authentication methods by default.

  WebSEAL also provides the flexibility to customize the authentication mechanism.

• The result of successful authentication to WebSEAL is an ISAM client identity.

• WebSEAL uses this client identity to build a credential for that user.
• The authorization service uses this credential to permit or deny access to protected resources after evaluating the authorization policies governing each object.

Parent topic: Authentication overview

Related concepts

• Client identities and credentials
• Authentication process flow
• Authenticated and unauthenticated access to resources

Related reference

• Information in a user request
• Supported authentication methods
• Authentication challenge based on user agent