cisco certification security

cisco certification security.user to present evidence that he or she has been authenticated. This eliminates the need to present the credential multiple times. Figure 5.6 shows a simple example.A simple SSO example is shown in Figure 5.6. Suppose a user wants to access a resource on Server B. For example, the user sends an HTTP GET request message to Server B to access a Web page (step l). o The SSO server is used to provide authentication services to Server B. When Server B receives the HTTPGET request message, it redirects the user to the SSO server in this unit to perform authentication (Steps 2 and 3). The user will then request the SSO server to perform the authentication, and the SSO server will redirect the user, who already has "proof of identity", back to Server B (Steps 4 and 5). Server B will verify the user's "proof of identity" before granting the user access to the resource.............(. Unit AAlthough the idea of SSO is very simple, it is actually very difficult to implement because of the variety and diversity of systems used by large enterprises. In fact, units that implement SSO typically do so only within the part of the network that hosts some of their systems. in addition, SSO shares the same shortcomings as other centralized authentication systems: the authentication server can become a single point of failure, and an attacker who has cracked an account can access all of the systems to which the user in question has access.Typically, a directory system (e.g., an LDAP-based system) can be considered an SSO implementation. Other well-known SSO implementations are Kerberos,SESAME, OpenlD, and OAuth. The following shows important concepts related to SSO, which are described in detail later in this chapter. Again, while these concepts are not part of the SECFND blueprint, having a grasp of them will be helpful to security professionals in their work.Single sign-on is an authentication method that performs authentication in which the user will authenticate to an authentication server (also called an SSO server). Once the user is authenticated, the SSO server "issues" a certificate of identity that the user can use to access other systems in the organization without having to authenticate again.The protocol used by Kerberos to implement SSO uses the concept of a ticket containing "proof of identity".Figure 5-6 Single Sign-On (SSO) System5.2 Introduction to Identity and Access Management 241