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Authentication subsystems

Authentication is one of the categories of the SkyVault subsystem. An authentication subsystem is a coordinated stack of compatible components responsible for providing authentication and identity-related functionality to SkyVault.

SkyVault offers multiple implementations of the authentication subsystem, each engineered to work with one of the different types of back-end authentication server that you have available in your enterprise.

An authentication subsystem provides the following functions to SkyVault:

  • Password-based authentication for web browsing, Microsoft SharePoint protocol, FTP, and WebDAV
  • CIFS file system authentication
  • Web browser, Microsoft SharePoint protocol, and WebDAV Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • User registry export (the automatic population of the SkyVault user and authority database)

The main benefits of the authentication subsystem are:

  • Subsystems for all supported authentication types are pre-wired and there is no need to edit template configuration.
  • There is no danger of compatibility issues between sub-components, as these have all been pre-selected. For example, your CIFS authenticator and authentication filter are guaranteed to be compatible with your authentication component.
  • Common parameters are shared and specified in a single place. There is no need to specify the same parameters to different components in multiple configuration files.
  • There is no need to edit the web.xml file. The web.xml file uses generic filters that call into the authentication subsystem. The SkyVault.war file is a portable unit of deployment.
  • You can swap from one type of authentication to another by activating a different authentication subsystem.
  • Your authentication configuration will remain standard and, therefore, more manageable to support.
  • Authentication subsystems are easily chained
Note: Functions such as NTLM SSO and CIFS authentication can only be targeted at a single subsystem instance in the authentication chain. This is a restriction imposed by the authentication protocols themselves. For this reason, SkyVault targets these ‘direct’ authentication functions at the first member of the authentication chain that has them enabled.