Authentication Concepts
Authentication is an element of information security that enables you to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information flow, supported by the information systems in your business operations. With the increasing use of distributed systems based on open standards and flexible information sharing with multiple business partners, establishing the identities of communicating parties also becomes an important element in protecting your business operations.
Authentication in SAP NetWeaver includes the process of establishing and verifying the identity of a person or a system component as a prerequisite for allowing the person or system component access to a SAP NetWeaver server system.
Implementation Considerations
SAP NetWeaver is a component in your system landscape that enables integrated access to use various back-end resources. Therefore, the authentication process is initiated when a client system requests access to various system resources.
You can use several types of client frontends to access SAP NetWeaver systems over different corresponding communication channels. The mechanisms for authentication in SAP NetWeaver are specific to the communication channel you use to access system data.
Integration
SAP NetWeaver enables you to use a number of user authentication mechanisms. The supported authentication mechanisms also enable you to efficiently integrate your SAP NetWeaver systems in Single Sign-On environments. When using Single Sign-On you can provide seamless user access to back-end systems.
For more
information, see
Integration in Single
Sign-On Environments.
In addition, the available authentication mechanisms give you the flexibility to customize user authentication policies for your security needs with minimal development effort. You can, however, use the development capabilities of SAP NetWeaver systems to develop custom enhancements of the standard authentication mechanisms.
For more
information, see
Developing
Authentication Enhancements.
Features
Conforming to the client-server architecture of the system, the authentication process is negotiated between the client front-end and the back-end SAP NetWeaver server. See the topics below for an overview of the authentication functions available with each of the access channels for your SAP NetWeaver systems.
● Authentication for Web Based Access
Provides information about the available authentication mechanisms for interactive user logon when using HTTP based front-end clients, for example, Web Dynpro.
● Authentication for Web Services
Provides information about the available mechanisms for authenticating Web Service access to SAP NetWeaver systems.
● Authentication for Communication between Systems
Provides information about the supported mechanisms for authenticating system specific (non-dialog) communication to and from SAP NetWeaver systems.