Federation and Single Sign-On

When a principal logs in to access a protected resource or service, Access Manager sends a request to the appropriate identity provider for authentication confirmation. If the identity provider sends a positive response, the principal gains access to all provider sites within the authentication domain. If the identity provider sends a negative response, the principal is directed to authenticate again using the Liberty-based federation process.

In the Liberty-based federation process, a principal selects an identity provider and sends credentials for authentication. After authentication is complete and access is granted, the principal is issued a session token from the Access Manager Authentication Service and redirected to the requested page. As long as the session token remains valid, the principal can access other service providers in the authentication domain without having to authenticate again.

Common Domain Services for Federation Management are used by a service provider to determine the identity provider used by a principal in an authentication domain that contains multiple identity providers. See Chapter 4, Common Domain Services for Federation Management for details.