Using Active Directory to authenticate users in a WWW facing website
- by Basiclife
Hi,
I'm looking at starting a new web app which needs to be secure (if for no other reason than that we'll need PCI accreditation at some point).
From previous experience working with PCI (on a domain), the preferred method is to use integrated windows authentication which is then passed all the way through the app to the database. This allows for better auditing as well as object-level permissions (ie an end user can't read the credit card table).
There are advantages in that even if someone compromises the webserver, they won't be able to glean any additional information from the database. Also, the webserver isn't storing any database credentials (beyond perhaps a simple anonymous user with very few permissions)
So, now I'm looking at the new web app which will be on the public internet. One suggestion is to have a Active Directory server and create windows accounts on the AD for each user of the site. These users will then be placed into the appropriate NT groups to decide which DB permissions they should have (and which pages they can access).
ASP already provides the AD membership provider and role provider so this should be fairly simple to implement.
There are a number of questions around this - Scalability, reliability, etc... and I was wondering if there is anyone out there with experience of this approach or, even better, some good reasons why to do it / not to do it.
Any input appreciated
Regards
Basiclife
