Introduction to authentication

Authentication is the act of confirming a user’s identity, for example, by providing a set of credentials.

In access management, authentication is tightly coupled with authorization. Usually, it’s important to confirm that a user is who they say they are, and to make sure they can access only a subset of information.

Consider a user who wants to access an online shop. As the owner of the shop, you want to make sure the user’s identity is confirmed as it’s tied to their shipping and email addresses and payment information. You also want to make sure the user can only access their own information.

You can deploy a web agent on the web server hosting the online shop. The agent redirects the user’s request to an AM login page, where the user enters their credentials, such as username and password. AM determines who the user is, and whether the user has the right to access the protected page. AM then redirects the user back to the protected page with authorization credentials that can be verified by the agent. The agent allows the user authorized by AM to access the page.

In the same way, you can also use AM to protect physical devices connected on the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, a delivery van tracking system could have its proxying gateway authenticate to a brokering system using an X.509 certificate to allow it to enable an HTTPS protocol and then connect to sensors in its delivery trucks. If the X.509 certificate is valid, the brokering system can monitor a van’s fuel consumption, speed, mileage, and overall engine condition to maximize each van’s operating efficiency.