Privileged-User Authentication; Authentication Of Administrators - Netscape MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 6.01 Installation And Setup Manual

Introduction to Authentication
• Administrators—privileged users who connect to the server to do system or
server administration tasks
• Agents—privileged users who connect to the server to do agent operations
This section explains how Certificate Management System identifies and
authenticates these users, and it provides details about the various authentication
methods supported by the server.
This section has the following sections:
•

Privileged-User Authentication

• End-Entity Authentication
Privileged-User Authentication
For authenticating privileged users, such as administrators and agents, Certificate
Management System uses built-in authentication mechanisms.

Authentication of Administrators

When an administrator makes an administrative request to Certificate
Management System (from the CMS window within Netscape Console or from any
command-line tool), the server needs to authenticate the administrator before
processing the request. To facilitate this, Certificate Management System supports
an authentication method that includes user ID- and password-based
authentication from the client and SSL server authentication from the server.
Certificate Management System identifies and authenticates users with
administrator privileges by checking their user IDs and passwords in its internal
database. These are the user IDs and passwords you entered in the internal
database when you created these user entries. For details, see "Setting Up
Administrators" on page 388.
Figure 15-1 illustrates the authentication process.
490 Netscape Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide • May 2002