HOWTO Design an Identity Management solution
From Consultancy.EdVoncken.NET
Concepts
Identity Management comprises four concepts:
- Identification
- Your claimed identity, for example a username
- Authentication
- Proof of identity, for example using passwords or biometrics
- Authorization
- Access control, determines which services you may use
- Auditing
- "You did WHAT?!"
Auditing is outside the scope of this article.
Most Identity Management solutions consist of two main components:
- LDAP Directory, containing identity and authorization information
- Kerberos, for authentication
Red Hat IPA
Red Hat offers the Red Hat IPA Server, which is a combination of an LDAP Directory Server + Kerberos. The acronym stands for "Identity, Policy, Audit". The Red Hat IPA Server has a nice web-based GUI, and integrates the LDAP and Kerberos components. A free (unsupported) version is available as FreeIPA.
Red Hat IPA is still very much under development, but already usable for centralizing user account management.