Benefits of Using PAM

The PAM framework allows you to configure the use of system entry services (ftp, login, telnet, or rsh, for example) for user authentication. Some benefits that PAM provides are as follows:

• Flexible configuration policy

  • Per application authentication policy

  • The ability to choose a default authentication mechanism

  • Multiple passwords on high-security systems

• Ease of use for the end user

  • No retyping of passwords if the passwords are the same for different mechanisms.

  • The ability to prompt the user for passwords for multiple authentication methods without having the user enter multiple commands.

• The ability to pass optional parameters to the user authentication services