WebSphere Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux,Windows

 

Planning a Credential Vault

The Credential Vault is a service that stores credentials that allow portlets to log in to applications outside the realm on behalf of the user. It manages multiple identities for portlets and users.

Using Credential Vault, a portlet can retrieve a user's authentication identity and then pass the information to a backend application. The Credential Vault features the following two levels of sign-on:

Active Credentials

Active Credentials allow you to establish connections through Basic Authentication, Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA) token authentication or simple form-based user ID and password challenges. The Service encapsulates the single sign-on functionality for the portlet writer in an object.

Passive Credentials

Passive Credentials retrieve stored secret data such as user ID and password or certificates. This option is more flexible but requires portlet writers to manage their own connections and authentication to backend applications with the credentials (User ID and password) they retrieved from the Credential Vault.
Credential objects can also pass IBM® Tivoli® Access Manager for e-business or Computer Associates eTrust SiteMinder single sign-on tokens to backend applications.

IBM WebSphere® Portal Express provides one simple database vault implementation for mappings to secrets for other enterprise applications. By default, the Credential Vault contains an administrator-managed vault segment and a user-managed vault segment. Administrator-managed vaults allow users to update mappings; however, users cannot add new applications to this vault. The user-managed vault segment allows users to add application definitions, such as a POP3 mail account, under the user vault and store a mapping there. By default, the vault uses an encryption plugin that encodes the passwords in Base 64.

WebSphere Portal Express initially provides two vault adapter configurations that write to the database:

WebSphere Portal also supports the storage and retrieval of credentials from other vault services, such as Tivoli Access Manager. WebSphere Portal ships a Credential Vault adapter for Tivoli Access Manager. This plugin works on the following:

Parent topic: Security and authentication considerations
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