Out of the box, Ephesoft uses Tomcat for authentication, authorization, and group management. However, in most production environments, this does not suffice and other external services, such as Active Directory, can be configured to perform these functions. Active Directory is Microsoft's implementation of a directory service based on the industry standard LDAP protocol.
LDAP, or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, is a standards-based protocol for communicating with a directory server. The structure of the protocol itself is not important, because the details of this protocol are hidden behind an API in all practical applications of the protocol. However, you should understand that it can be used to authenticate users, search directory paths, and view object attributes. Directory servers monitor configured TCP ports on host servers for inbound LDAP requests. SSL may be employed within the transport layer in order to ensure encrypted communication...