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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 SAPNetWeaver systems over different corresponding communication channels. The mechanisms for authentication in SAPNetWeaver are specific to the communication channel you use to access system data.

Integration

SAPNetWeaver 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 SAPNetWeaver server. See the topics below for an overview of the authentication functions available with each of the access channels for your SAP NetWeaver systems.