Polycom RealPresence Group 550 Administrator's Manual page 104

Administrator's Guide for the Polycom RealPresence Group Series
and one for user access. For this reason, external authentication is also referred to as Active Directory
authentication.
The RealPresence Group system administrator configures the external authentication settings on the
RealPresence Group system to specify the address of an AD Server for authenticating user logins, AD
group for user access, and AD group for admin access on the RealPresence Group system. The
RealPresence Group system can map only one Active Directory group to a given role.
Users can enter their network account credentials to access the system on the following interfaces:
● Web interface (admin access only)
● Local interface (user and admin role accounts when Require Login for System Access is
enabled; admin accounts when admin-only areas of the local interface are accessed)
Point to Note about External Authentication:
When External Authentication is enabled in PKI environments where Always Validate Peer
Certificates from Server is enabled on the RealPresence Group system, make sure to configure the
Active Directory Server Address on the RealPresence Group endpoint using the address information
that is in the Active Directory Server's identity certificate. This is important in allowing the
RealPresence Group system to successfully validate the Active Directory Server's identity certificate.
As an example, if the Active Directory Server's identity certificate contains its DNS name only, and no
specific IP address, configuring the Active Directory Server Address on the RealPresence Group
system using the server's IP address will result in certificate validation failure, and consequently
authentication failure. The RealPresence Group system configuration would have to specify the
server by DNS name in this case to successfully match the server certificate data.
RealPresence Group systems support Active Directory on Microsoft Windows Server version 2008 R2 and
Microsoft Windows Server 2012.
The RealPresence Group system local user account is disabled when Enable Active Directory
External Authentication is enabled. The admin account is active and usable, however.
To enable external authentication:
1 In the web interface, go to Admin Settings > Security > Global Security > Authentication.
2 Configure these settings on the Authentication page, then click Save.
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