I'm new to IIS. I've read a book on admin'ing IIS, and I've played around
with a test server. My question is this: how do you set up authentication so
that only a small group of people can get at your website? Do you have to
rely solely on Windows-level security? It seems to me that anybody who can
authenticate to the server is allowed into the site, which in my case means
everyone in the domain. ???
---scott

Re: Authorizing a group by David

David
Fri Feb 16 17:10:27 CST 2007

You're confusing authentication (who are you) with authorization (what
are you allowed to do).

If you want to set things up such that only a small group of people
can get at the website, then you need to:
1. Authenticate EVERYONE so you know who is accessing your website
2. Then Authorize only the small group of people to have access to
your website's contents

Think about it this way -- there is no way that you can authenticate
only the users you want, because that is a Catch-22 -- you don't know
the user's identity until AFTER Authentication, so you can't constrain
authentication to only certain users.

In your case, you simply need to enable Authentication, disable
Anonymous access, and ACL the resources using Windows-level security
in NTFS to only give read access to the small group of people (who all
have Windows user accounts).

Otherwise, you are certainly free to write your own authentication and
authorization scheme, but none will be as easily integrated nor secure
than what Windows already provides.



//David
http://w3-4u.blogspot.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
//



On Feb 16, 12:11 pm, sthom...@phmining.com
<sthomasophmining...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I'm new to IIS. I've read a book on admin'ing IIS, and I've played around
> with a test server. My question is this: how do you set up authentication so
> that only a small group of people can get at your website? Do you have to
> rely solely on Windows-level security? It seems to me that anybody who can
> authenticate to the server is allowed into the site, which in my case means
> everyone in the domain. ???
> ---scott



Re: Authorizing a group by sthomasophminingcom

sthomasophminingcom
Sat Feb 17 06:01:00 CST 2007

OK, I understand that, but here is a complicating factor. We will have users
within the company defined to AD, but we will also have users outside the
company accessing the site. We planned to authenticate both using IAS against
one of our Radius servers. In this case, the external users would not be
defined to AD...how do we go about securing the site in this case?
---scott

"David Wang" wrote:

> You're confusing authentication (who are you) with authorization (what
> are you allowed to do).
>
> If you want to set things up such that only a small group of people
> can get at the website, then you need to:
> 1. Authenticate EVERYONE so you know who is accessing your website
> 2. Then Authorize only the small group of people to have access to
> your website's contents
>
> Think about it this way -- there is no way that you can authenticate
> only the users you want, because that is a Catch-22 -- you don't know
> the user's identity until AFTER Authentication, so you can't constrain
> authentication to only certain users.
>
> In your case, you simply need to enable Authentication, disable
> Anonymous access, and ACL the resources using Windows-level security
> in NTFS to only give read access to the small group of people (who all
> have Windows user accounts).
>
> Otherwise, you are certainly free to write your own authentication and
> authorization scheme, but none will be as easily integrated nor secure
> than what Windows already provides.
>
>
>
> //David
> http://w3-4u.blogspot.com
> http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
> //
>
>
>
> On Feb 16, 12:11 pm, sthom...@phmining.com
> <sthomasophmining...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> > I'm new to IIS. I've read a book on admin'ing IIS, and I've played around
> > with a test server. My question is this: how do you set up authentication so
> > that only a small group of people can get at your website? Do you have to
> > rely solely on Windows-level security? It seems to me that anybody who can
> > authenticate to the server is allowed into the site, which in my case means
> > everyone in the domain. ???
> > ---scott
>
>
>

Re: Authorizing a group by David

David
Sat Feb 17 06:27:18 CST 2007

Well, the complicating factor depends on Radius's security integration
since it's the one introducing non-AD users.

Windows naturally secures with AD user principals up/down the whole
Windows stack. Custom authentication protocol and user identity system
is responsible for integrating. It will likely no longer look as neat/
integrated nor as easy.

Depending on the number of external users, I would simply give those
users AD accounts as well, just with a Group membership identifying
them as "Extranet" so that you can continue to ACL appropriately.

In other words, you want to stay within AD to take advantage of the
built-in Security system of Windows. When you introduce users outside
of AD, it will simply complicate the situation since either you or the
provider of the non-AD users become responsible for providing the code
for security integration.



//David
http://w3-4u.blogspot.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
//



On Feb 17, 4:01 am, sthom...@phmining.com
<sthomasophmining...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> OK, I understand that, but here is a complicating factor. We will have users
> within the company defined to AD, but we will also have users outside the
> company accessing the site. We planned to authenticate both using IAS against
> one of our Radius servers. In this case, the external users would not be
> defined to AD...how do we go about securing the site in this case?
> ---scott
>
>
>
> "David Wang" wrote:
> > You're confusing authentication (who are you) with authorization (what
> > are you allowed to do).
>
> > If you want to set things up such that only a small group of people
> > can get at the website, then you need to:
> > 1. Authenticate EVERYONE so you know who is accessing your website
> > 2. Then Authorize only the small group of people to have access to
> > your website's contents
>
> > Think about it this way -- there is no way that you can authenticate
> > only the users you want, because that is a Catch-22 -- you don't know
> > the user's identity until AFTER Authentication, so you can't constrain
> > authentication to only certain users.
>
> > In your case, you simply need to enable Authentication, disable
> > Anonymous access, and ACL the resources using Windows-level security
> > in NTFS to only give read access to the small group of people (who all
> > have Windows user accounts).
>
> > Otherwise, you are certainly free to write your own authentication and
> > authorization scheme, but none will be as easily integrated nor secure
> > than what Windows already provides.
>
> > //David
> >http://w3-4u.blogspot.com
> >http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
> > //
>
> > On Feb 16, 12:11 pm, sthom...@phmining.com
> > <sthomasophmining...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> > > I'm new to IIS. I've read a book on admin'ing IIS, and I've played around
> > > with a test server. My question is this: how do you set up authentication so
> > > that only a small group of people can get at your website? Do you have to
> > > rely solely on Windows-level security? It seems to me that anybody who can
> > > authenticate to the server is allowed into the site, which in my case means
> > > everyone in the domain. ???
> > > ---scott- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -