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About User Authentication

Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user. Siebel Business Applications support multiple approaches for authenticating users. You choose either security adapter authentication or Web SSO authentication for your Siebel Business Applications users:

• Security adapter authentication. Siebel Business Applications provide a security adapter framework to support several different user authentication scenarios:
  • Database authentication. Siebel Business Applications support authentication against the underlying database. In this architecture, the security adapter authenticates users against the Siebel database. Siebel Business Applications provide a database security adapter (it is configured as the default security adapter).
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or Active Directory Service
  • Interfaces (ADSI) authentication. Siebel Business Applications support authentication against LDAP-compliant or Microsoft Active Directory (AD) directories. In this architecture, the security adapter authenticates users against the directory. Siebel Business Applications provide the following two security adapters to authenticate against directory servers:
    • ADSI Security Adapter
    • LDAP Security Adapter

      For more information, see About LDAP or ADSI Security Adapter Authentication.

  • Custom. You can use a custom adapter you provide, and configure the Siebel Business Applications to use this adapter. For more information, see Security Adapter SDK.
• Web Single Sign-On (Web SSO). This approach uses an external authentication service to authenticate users before they access Siebel Business Applications. In this architecture, a security adapter does not authenticate the user. The security adapter simply looks up and retrieves a user's Siebel user ID and database account from the directory based on the identity key that is accepted from the external authentication service. For more information, see Web Single Sign-On Authentication.

You can choose the approach for user authentication individually for each application in your environment, based on the specific application requirements. However, there are administrative benefits to using a consistent approach across all of your Siebel Business Applications, because a consistent approach lowers the overall complexity of the deployment. Note that a Siebel Mobile Web Client can use only database authentication against the local database on a Mobile client. For more information about authentication for a Siebel Mobile Web Client, see Siebel Remote and Replication Manager Administration Guide.Referential and procedural information in the following topics relates to all major authentication strategies. Much of the specific information in these topics applies to more than one authentication strategy. Some of the information applies to both authentication and user administration.

• Configuration parameters related to authentication. Configuration parameter values determine how your authentication architecture components interact. For information about the purpose of configuration parameters, see Configuration Parameters Related to Authentication.
• Seed data. When you install your Siebel Business Applications, you are provided seed data that is related to authentication, user registration, and user access to Siebel Business Applications. For detailed information on the seed data that is provided and for procedures for viewing and editing seed data, see Seed Data.