ADFS support below authentication policy
Windows based Authentication
Form Based Authentication
Certificate Based Authentication
Which Authentication Policy is Stronger in ADFS ?
If all policies are set which authentication will be given first priority ? Why ?
You tagged as ADFS 2.0 so I assume you are using that.
Good writeup here.
You can set the order in "localAuthenticationTypes".
By default, on the extranet (via WAP) it's Forms as it's non-domain joined so no WIA.
By default, on the intranet, it's WIA as it's domain-joined and providing the browser is configured to support WIA.
Related
I work for a healthcare SaaS company where all of our SSOs use SAML 2.0, and we cannot use LDAP. We have one particular client right now who wants to use ADFS to SSO from their intranet to our site and seem to act as though LDAP is the only option (and that they can't produce SAML assertions for our handshake).
What is the difference between SSO and SAML? What can one accomplish that the other one cannot? Why would my company require SAML over LDAP?
What I'm theorizing from research but am welcoming correction on:
-SAML is safer than LDAP because of authentication/encryption (but I don't know the specifics)
-LDAP is more widely used with companies but SAML is often used with enterprise clients
-LDAP can also be used to control users' access to other programs/sites they have access to (i.e. IT and revoking access to a terminated employee)
Thank you for your help!
Using LDAP for authentication requires disclosing the user's credentials at the application. If the application is running in a different administrative domain (i.e. a SaaS app) this is less preferred since the user's credentials end up in a 3rd-party domain.
OTOH SAML allows you to sign in to the application without disclosing the user's credentials to the application itself which offers increased security. It also increases convenience since the user only has to remember one credential.
LDAP is an Identity repository.
SAML is an Identity standard that could use LDAP as the repository. Or it could use something else like AD.
Just a correction - SAML does not use SOAP.
You can configure ADFS 4.0 (Server 2016) to authenticate against an LDAP and ADFS supports SAML.
If ADFS was configured that way, you would use SAML for SSO, authenticate against a LDAP and get a SAML token returned.
We want to setup ADFS 3.0 to enable OAuth2 based authentication. I have read lots of documentation, but am still unclear if this is supported.
Can ADFS be used as an authorization server for oauth, or is oauth2 support in ADFS only meant to work as a client to another authorization server?
Any help for setting up adfs as oauth provider/server is appreciated.
in ADFS 2012R2 (aka ADFS 3.0), we only support the authorization grant flow. The only scenario is for public clients (say a mobile app on iOS/Android/Windows) to access a RESTful service and authorizing via JWT tokens. You can see this at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn633593.aspx
With ADFS 2016 (which will release imminently), you have the full Oauth/OIDC support. With this you can build web apps, single page apps, API's, multi-tiered app systems that require On-behalf-of support, confidential clients (with support for windows service accounts acting as confidential clients). You can check this out https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/identity/ad-fs/ad-fs-development
We are just getting started with implementing ADFS authentication, however are still getting our bearings in terms of how to integrate it with other applications and systems.
From what I can tell, the main supported authentication systems for many of the applications we use (I am specifically interested in Blackboard authentication at the moment) are ones like Shibboleth, OAuth, CAS, LDAP and each application's own authentication implication.
What I'm not sure, however, is if (and where) ADFS falls under these categories. Conceptually, it seems like a type of "Central Authentication System" (CAS), but is more similar to Shibboleth (also a federated identity management system). Do some of the main categories of authentication overlap each other? From the documentation, I can see:
AD FS provides Web SSO to federated partners outside your organization, which enables their users to have a SSO experience when they access your organization’s Web-based applications.
The Central Authentication Service (CAS) is a single sign-on protocol for the web. Its purpose is to permit a user to access multiple applications while providing their credentials (such as userid and password) only once. It also allows web applications to authenticate users without gaining access to a user's security credentials, such as a password. The name CAS also refers to a software package that implements this protocol
Shibboleth is among the world's most widely deployed federated identity solutions, connecting users to applications both within and between organizations.
My main question is this:
Is ADFS a type of one of those main implementations (like CAS)...
or is it a proprietary version of something like Shibboleth, but can be used interchangeably...
or does it fall in a category outside of one of of one of those systems (and hence need to be handled through a manual or custom process)?
Just to clarify:
Shibboleth is an Identity Provider (IDP) aka Security Token System (STS)
OAuth is an authentication protocol
LDAP is an Identity repository
An IDP authenticates against a repository using an authentication protocol.
ADFS is also an Identity Provider (IDP) aka Security Token System (STS)
I've not seen the term "CAS" used in this context.
Shibboleth and ADFS perform the same function and are (in a general sense) interchangeable.
In practice, they aren't because Shibboleth only supports the SAML 2.0 protocol whereas ADFS supports WS-Fed, SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect / OAuth 2.0.
Some additions/updates to the accepted answer from rbrayb a few years later:
Shibboleth IdP is the reference implementation for SAML and also supports CAS and OpenID Connect.
Shibboleth SP is the SAML service provider from the same project.
CAS (Central Authentication Service) is another web-SSO protocol like SAML; it's also the name of the reference implementation, which also supports SAML, OIDC, etc.
OAuth is an authorization standard.
SAML, CAS, OpenID, Kerberos and other SSO protocols are based on the concept of a Trusted third party.
LDAP happens to be a service in which, in a given organization, most or everyone already has an account with a password. There is nothing inherently special about it as a server to authenticate against. It could just as well have been a telnet server or web server with basic auth or a SQL server; in any of these cases, the application has to collect the username & password and pass those through to the back-end authentication service, unlike SSO protocols. (LDAP happens to provide a vendor-neutral, non-interactively-focused interface for the authentication, which is part of the reason it's often put to this task rather than the others.)
(I originally tried adding this as a comment but comments do not support the formatting I wanted.)
I have a more theoretical question about AD FS. If I use it as a STS (Security token service) for accessing some internal company information from outside of private company network (over internet), using Claim-based authentication, can I decide exactly what credentials will be used for authentication or is it pre-set by Active Directory policies? To be more accurate, could I authenticate form a device that is not registered in AD?
If you want to authenticate against ADFS from outside the corporate domain, you should install the ADFS proxy in your DMZ.
ADFS can be used to authenticate users against the Active Directory domain it is installed in, or trust tokens coming from a federated STS.
So, if you have a web application that trusts tokens issued by ADFS, you can use security protocols like WS-Federation, WS-Trust or OAuth 2.0 (in ADFS 3.0) to get a token from ADFS and use it to authenticate against your web application.
Device registration is not required to use these protocols.
HTH.
Planning to use ADFS to federate. One big challenge that we find is that not all applications are claims aware, also every application has a different role based access. In such a how can we achieve 100% SSO Authentication and Authorization using Identity Claims.
In case ADFS cannot support such a requirement, What other vendor solutions are available which can supports such a requirement.
A claims-aware application in the .NET world uses WIF / WS-Federation to get a set of claims in a SAML token which are then used to control user access and functionality.
ADFS only answers to WS-Federation or SAML requests.
So to get a non claims-aware application to use AFDS, the application needs to be changed to add support for either of these protocols.
Refer: SAML : SAML connectivity / toolkit and the links inside the post.
Or you could go the other way and put something like an OpenAM agent around the applications and then federate OpenAM and ADFS.
ADFS on Server 2012 R2 has a new feature as part of the Web Application proxy, refer Create a Non-Claims-Aware Relying Party Trust.
There's a walkthrough here - Walkthrough Guide: Connect to Applications and Services from Anywhere with Web Application Proxy
and a good example here - First Impressions – AD FS and Window Server 2012 R2 – Part II.