Book Image

OpenStack Cloud Security

By : Fabio Alessandro Locati
Book Image

OpenStack Cloud Security

By: Fabio Alessandro Locati

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (14 chapters)
OpenStack Cloud Security
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Federated identity


Majority of the companies today have multiple services, each one requiring an authentication. For years, companies have chosen to have multiple databases of users, one for each service. Although this worked for a long time, since the majority of companies only had one or two services, this is not working any more, since today, a lot of companies have tens of services. This redundant approach, apart from being very confusing for the users, exposes a lot of potential security problems.

In fact, it's easier for a malicious person to gain an account on a system in this case, because he will have multiple people to trick. Also, since when a new person is recruited, many accounts will need to be created. It is likely that fewer checks will be done for each account creation, leaving the system less secure.

Today, it is possible to create Federated identity, which are accounts provided by an Identity Provider (IdP) to one or many Service Provider (SP). Using this approach, you...