If you were to build an enterprise SaaS app today, what would be the preferred protocol/endpoint to obtain the list of users, emails and groups from an Azure AD deployment?
Historically this was done via LDAP connection to an Active Directory Domain Controller, and I see that Azure offers an LDAPS service (Azure AD DS).
ADFS, which is quite widespread, is just a SAML-compatible IdP, but it doesn't seem to provide an API for listing the directory of users.
The Microsoft Graph API seems to be able to provide at least some of this information, but it seems to be fairly new and very widespread. There's also something called SCIM that appears to have broader support, but it doesn't seem to be super popular on enterprise cloud apps either.
My research has shown that the apparent right answer for this problem is to implement SCIM 2.0 APIs on the product.
The main annoyance of the approach is that SCIM 2.0 is a protocol that is triggered by the directory provider (i.e. a SaaS app will receive an API call from Azure AD when a user needs to be created or updated, instead of the SaaS app contacting a directory endpoint to fetch the information when it is needed).
This creates a few annoyances such as potential race conditions when updating user information in the middle of application processes, or the fact that updates to the directory can't be triggered at convenient times (such as nightly, for example). Debugging/testing is also more problematic.
Related
I'd like to add the ability to create JIRA issues from within a Unity game (C#), such as for submitting player feedback and bugs. I see various authentication approaches, from "basic" auth (just a raw UN and PW) to an Auth Token approach, to possibly some OAuth-based approach which I don't yet understand.
I've set up JIRA integration in web projects over the years, and it was fairly simple. I never had concerns over authentication, since the credentials to access JIRA were always stored within the web server's configuration. But with a deployed application (such as a game created in Unity), I don't understand if there's any secure/correct way to provide credentials to the application. It seems that it would be trivial for anyone to either inspect the code, or the memory of the running application, and extra the authorization credentials.
Is there a secure way for a desktop application (not connected to a central server) to authenticate against an API like JIRA's?
I'm working on a WCF project that will be our new service layer.
These services will be called by 2 separate clients, the first of which is a WPF application and the other is an ASP.Net web application. The WPF client will be run by internal users and will authenticate with the service via domain authentication and run under the context of that user. The other will be used by external users and needs to authenticate using some separate mechanism then impersonate a "WebUser" account on our domain.
I'm reading a bit about Windows Identity Foundation and it sounds like this might be a good fit. Am I right in thinking I could have 2 token services, one for domain authentication and one for something like ASP.Net membership authentication (Or some similar equivalent) and have each client get it's token from the relevant STS and pass that along to the WCF service?
I'm assuming there is an STS I can use out of the box for domain authentication, but will I have to implement the second one myself to authenticate web users? I can't find a lot of information on this.
Am I thinking along the right lines or should I just be creating duel endpoints for each service each with a different authentication mechanism? Or should I be doing something completely different?
Thanks
The big advantage of using Claims-Based authentication / WIF is that both the task of authenticating the user AND the administration of the user's properties are moved way from the applications to the STS/Identity provider.
You are developing a service layer but the true benefits of using WIF will be for the applications written on top of your layer. The WPF application will no longer need to connect to the AD and fetch the user's groups to figure out what they are allowed to do. The groups will already be visible as claims in the token the user/WIF provides.
The web application (is it just one web application or more?) will no longer need the ASP.Net Membership database with accompanying user administration. This functionality gets moved to the STS.
There is a cost. (There always is, somehow...) Claims-Based authentication has a rather steep learning curve. It takes a while for the quarter to drop for all people involved.
So the answer to your question depends on what kind of users the web application(s?) built upon your service layer have and how many. And how much they wish to know about them. Can you perhaps trust Google / Facebook / Windows Live for authentication? Are the users already in an existing database within your domain? How much work will it take to maintain the user directories? Do your marketing people wish to send them emails regularly? Et cetera.
This is probably not just for the service layer's developers to decide, but something to discuss with people in the rest of your organisation.
If the benefits are not particularly big, the alternative is to simply keep these responsibilities at the web application's server. Each web application will have a good old ASP.Net membership database, it'll authenticate the user all by itself. When asking queries from the service layer, it'll present its web server certificate plus specify the user's name and type.
If the benefits are big enough, you can in principle use ADFS 2.0 for everything. It can also store external users nowadays and it's free if you already have Active Directory. Or the ThinkTecture 2.0 server that Ross recommends. It's easier to customize and perhaps your systems administrators and security folks will not be too enthusiastic about opening the firewall to the ADFS server.
Microsoft has some good reads on WIF, in particular an Overview of Claims-Based Architecture.
You should take a look at identity server as it can indeed handle this scenario.
The person who leads the project above has a great pluralsight video on this exact scenario! You need to sign up to watch it, but they offer a free trial.
Basically you get a token from the identity provider (windows ADFS for the internal client, and what ever you decide for the external users). You will give this token to the federated gateway (identity server probably, but it could be Azure ACS). This will return an authentication token that you can then use with your service.
Do anybody know if there is any sort of API available for Cyber-Ark Privileged Identity Management to integrate it with an enterprise applications?
I think the answer might be 50% yes, 50% no. Definitely Cyber-Ark offers web services and an API for their Vault objects, so you should be able to retrieve passwords from the Vault from a trusted application. There is a paragraph of sales information on Cyber-Ark's website:
Cyber-Ark's comprehensive SDK provides an interface to the Vault objects that you can use to develop custom solutions that work with the Vault. Cyber-Ark provides a variety of SDK such as Command Line Interface, ActiveX API, .Net API and Web Services API
But beyond working with their Vault objects, I'm not entirely sure. I'm currently looking for more information on their Vault web services, and I think I need to register to be a Partner to get that information. I'll post a follow-up if I learn anymore.
You are suppose to purchase an API license per server to have read-only access to the vault for authorized applications.
They provide Java, C#, etc. libraries and you place authorization key material on the server to enable it access.
It is called CyberArk Application Identity Manager, an entire sub-product.
The only reference I could find:
http://lp.cyberark.com/rs/cyberarksoftware/images/ds-application-identity-manager-10-20-2014-en.pdf
CyberArk created Conjur. It is open source and free. It contains its own Vault and is intended for dynamic Application Access Management. In particular, Conjur and its upgrade Conjur Enterprise should secure the complete DevOps pipeline. The paid version can be integrated with the Vault solution (the PAS Core solution of CyberArk).
For static applications, CyberArk has the Credential Provider, Central Credential Provider and ASCP (I forgot the full name of it now). These solutions are agent based while Conjur is agentless. Because they are agent based, they are only intended for environments with comparatively slow changes as an agent needs to be installed on every server in order to provide the credentials from the Vault.
These solutions have REST API, CLI and SDK capabilities.
I have a need to implement a STS-IP server for our web applications and services. The server will need to issue SAML tokens for the following scenarios:
Business partner submits their SAML token which is converted to a SAML token with the claims required for our applications. This token is used to access our Web Applications and Services.
Our public facing applications need to have a user sign in (via forms authentication) and then access our web applications and services with a SAML token.
Our clients (without a STS trust) needs to authenticate with our STS-IP server, get a SAML token, and use that token to access our WCF services.
In all 3 scenarios, we need to have custom claims on the SAML token that our applications and services use. The thought is once we identify the user, we would look up their authorization in our back-end systems and attach claims.
In these scenarios, you can assume the back-end authentication store is a custom implementation with authentication stored in Active Directory and authorization stored in a database.
So my thought has been, we need to create a custom STS-IP server using something like Windows Identity Framework. But I have also been reading that you should not do this because it can take some time.
Can I use an off-the-shelf STS-IP server? Everything I've seen is a mapping between one system to another (SAML to SAML or AD to SAML).
Why will it "take a long time" to build a production ready STS-IP ? I built one using WIF very easily, but I guess I don't understand the risks in doing this.
In terms of "It will take a long time", the documentation showing how to do this is very poor. See here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Geneva/thread/257d93be-165e-45a6-a277-fc7ed2286e7d/
Anyhow, you'll simply need to look over the code samples that Microsoft provides: Google for Identity Developer Training Kit. That should help you get started.
Why are you not considering using ADFS? If the backing store for authentication is AD, then ADFS is probably a good candidate to evaluate.
Before writing you own STS, you may want to check out this blog and closely review the features that you may need in the STS. Just because you can build one yourself, doesn't always mean you should.
extending adfs to multiple identity and attribute stores
They "why not" is relatively simple: Why take weeks to build something that will probably only handle a single use-case when you can put in off-the-shelf STS in a day that will cover all sorts of things your company may come up with? Building it yourself will also require you to become an expert in SAML (which is probably not the best us of your company's time).
Check out --
http://www.pingidentity.com/our-solutions/pingfederate.cfm
Good luck -- Ian
Agree with #eugenio - why not use ADFS?
ADFS can only authenticate against AD as discussed but it can derive authorisation attributes from AD / LDAP / SQL server
The nuts and bolts for an STS are available in VS 2010 plus the identity tool kits. A simple STS can be quickly prototyped.
There are some examples available. StarterSTS is already mentioned plus SelfSTS.
The hard part is getting the security right especially if this will be part of a production system. As per "Steve on Security" Build your own Directory Federation Service:
It may sound like I think it’ll be a
synch to develop this system and have
it work securely, but in reality there
is a lot that will need to go into it
to protect the network, the employees,
and the data this could possibly
interact with. It is tough to develop
applications securely. It is far
harder to develop secure applications
whose sole responsibility is security
related.
That's the reason that all the samples on the Internet have disclaimers in bold:
Do not use in a Production environment
We have an organization with several hundred internal users in Active Directory. We have some of our computer systems integrated with AD but have many disparate web applications scattered through the organization that have separate authentication and authorization mechanisms.
In addition, we have about 60K external users who will eventually be able to log into and use some of the aforementioned web applications (albeit with different permissions most of the time). These users will not be in AD, but some other data store (probably just a database table that would be maintained as part of some other processes we have in the company). The application should be flexible in the data stores it can authenticate against.
We are looking for a centralized authentication and authorization system that we can tie the web apps to. On the authentication side of things, we are working towards Single Sign-On (SSO). For the authorization side of things, we would like a centralized location where we can assign application permissions to users or groups of users. Bonus points for permission "groupings" or "templates" which would allow further organization.
We have looked at Atlassian's Crowd, which seems ideal for authentication, but the authorization side is bleak.
The mechanism by which the web applications would communicate with the central auth server must be standards based and easy to implement in many different platforms (ASP classic, .NET, php, Python, Java).
So, the specific question is: Do you know of any open-source or proprietary software that will function as both a centralized authentication and authorization server as discussed above? Or, do you know of any software that might do centralized authorization and integrate well with other centralized authentication applications.
I found this question which is a year old and doesn't seem to have a answer. I am hoping this time around, a solution can be found: Centralized Authentication and Authorization for several Web Services