1 Introduction and Roadmap

The WebLogic Security Service combines several layers of security features to prevent unauthorized access to your WebLogic Server domains. This document describes using roles and policies to determine who can access resources in a domain. The roles and policies feature fulfills the same function as the familiar Access Control List (ACL), but offers an improvement over ACLs: an ACL is static while roles and policies specify conditions under which users can access resources, and these conditions are evaluated at runtime.

The following sections describe the content and organization of this document:

• Document Scope and Audience

• Guide to This Document

• Related Information

• New and Changed Features for This Release

Document Scope and Audience

This document contains information that is useful for security architects and security administrators who are designing a security strategy for resources within a WebLogic Server domain. It includes information about resource types, options for securing Web applications and EJBs, different types of security roles and policies, and the components of a role and policy.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Java EE security and the other features of the WebLogic Security Service.

The information in this document is relevant during the design and development phases of a software project. This document does not address production phase administration topics. For links to WebLogic Server documentation and resources related to these topics, see Related Information.

Guide to This Document

The document is organized as follows:

• This chapter, Chapter 1, "Introduction and Roadmap," introduces the organization of this guide.

• Chapter 2, "Understanding WebLogic Resource Security," introduces terms and concepts, provides a workflow summary, and outlines the main steps for securing WebLogic resources.

• Chapter 3, "Resource Types You Can Secure with Policies," describes the different types of WebLogic resources that can be secured using the WebLogic Server Administration Console.

• Chapter 4, "Options for Securing Web Application and EJB Resources," describes options for securing EJB and Web application resources using deployment descriptors and/or the WebLogic Server Administration Console.

• Chapter 5, "Security Policies," describes security policies, including WebLogic Server default security policies. Also describes the components of a security policy.

• Chapter 6, "Users, Groups, And Security Roles," describes users and groups who access WebLogic resources, including WebLogic Server default groups. Also describes scoped security roles and global security roles, including WebLogic Server default global roles. A final section describes the components of a security role.

• Chapter 7, "Using XACML Documents to Secure WebLogic Resources," describes the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), an XML language for expressing authorization policies and role assignments.

• Appendix A, "Reference for XACML on WebLogic Server," describes the extensions that you can use when writing XACML 2.0 documents to protect resources on WebLogic Server and the restrictions that WebLogic Server places on XACML.

Related Information

Other WebLogic Server documents that may be of interest to security administrators wanting to secure WebLogic resources are:

• Understanding Security for Oracle WebLogic Server—Summarizes the features of the WebLogic Security Service, including an overview of its architecture and capabilities. It is the starting point for understanding WebLogic security.

• Securing Oracle WebLogic Server—Describes how to ensure that security is comprehensively configured for a WebLogic Server installation, including information about security providers, identity and trust and SSL.

• "Use roles and policies to secure resources" in Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help—Provides step-by-step instructions for using the WebLogic Server Administration Console to complete the tasks that this document describes.

These documents provide additional information about specific resource types:

• "Securing Web Applications," "Securing Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs)" and "Using Java Security to Protect WebLogic Resources" in Programming Security for Oracle WebLogic Server

• "Configuring Access Control" in Programming JCOM for Oracle WebLogic Server (COM resources)

• "Security" in Programming Resource Adapters for Oracle WebLogic Server (EIS resources)

• Securing WebLogic Web Services for Oracle WebLogic Server

Tutorials and Samples

Additional security documents are listed in "Sample Application and Code Examples" in Information Roadmap for Oracle WebLogic Server .

New and Changed Features for This Release

For a comprehensive listing of the new WebLogic Server features introduced in this release, see What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.