Most organizations have certain data that is designated for "authorized users only." Whether this is critical sales data, engineering and design samples, market research, human resources information, or other privileged information, it's important to make sure that only the correct users are allowed access.

This process of validating a user is called authentication. The authentication process takes the credentials submitted by a user and checks them against some sort of user account database. A user account database, in this context, is referred to as the authentication provider, and it can be an active directory, an LDAP, Azure Active Directory, or some other directory or database structure.

In this chapter, we will examine the various authentication aspects of SharePoint Server, including the following:

• Selecting and implementing...