Identity Management (Sun Java System Portal Server 7 Deployment Planning Guide)

Sun Java System Portal Server 7 Deployment Planning Guide

Identity Management

Portal Server uses identity management to control many users spanning a variety of different roles across the organization and sometimes outside the organization while accessing content, applications and services. The challenges include: Who is using an application? In what capacity do users serve the organization or company? What do users need to do, and what should users be able to access? How can others help with the administrative work?

Table 1–1 shows the identity management features and their benefits.

Table 1–1 Identity Management Features and Benefits


Feature	Description	Benefit
Directory service	Portal Server uses Access Manager and Directory Server	Portal Server uses an LDAP directory for storing user profiles, roles, and identity information for the purpose of authentication, single sign-on (SSO), delegated administration, and personalization Portal Server uses an open schema that can reside in a centralized user directory, thereby leveraging an enterprise or service provider’s investment in the Sun Java^TM System Access Manager and Sun Java^TM System Directory Server products.
User, policy, and provisioning management	Access Manager enables you to manage many users spanning a variety of different roles across the organization and sometimes outside the organization while accessing content, applications, and services.	Provides a centralized identity management solution for storing and managing identity information, which is integrated with a policy solution to enforce access rights, greatly simplifying these challenges. Extends a common identity to handle new applications, enables applications to share administrative work, and simplifies tasks normally associated with building these services. Consolidates management of users and applications. Personalizes content and service delivery. Simplifies and streamlines information and service access. Reduces costs associated with managing access and delivery. Provides secure policy-based access to applications. Ensures secure access as portal deployments expand beyond employee LAN access.
Single sign-on (SSO)	Access Manager integrates user authentication and single sign-on through an SSO API. Once the user is authenticated, the SSO API takes over. Each time the authenticated user tries to access a protected page, the SSO API determines if the user has the permissions required based on their authentication credentials. If the user is valid, access to the page is given without additional authentication. If not, the user is prompted to authenticate again.	Enhances user productivity by providing a consistent, centralized mechanism to manage authentication and single sign-on, while enabling employees, partners and customers access to content, applications, and services.
Delegated administration	The Portal Server administration console provides role-based delegated administration capabilities to different kinds of administrators to manage organizations, users, policy, roles, channels, and Portal Desktop providers based on the given permissions.	Enables IT to delegate portal administrative duties to free up valuable IT resources and administration.
Security	Provides single sign-on for aggregated applications to the portal.	Security is an important functionality in portals. Security can address many different needs within the portal, including authentication into the portal, encryption of the communications between the portal and the end user, and authorization of the content and applications to only users that are allowed access.