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Introduction | About authentication |
Introduction
This section introduces you to the authentication process from the user and the administrators perspective, and provides supplementary information about Fortinet publications.
Note: This document does not describe
The following topics are covered in this section:
•About authentication
•User’s view of authentication
•FortiGate administrator’s view of authentication
•About this document
•FortiGate documentation
•Related documentation
•Customer service and technical support
About authentication
Computer networks have, for the most part, improved worker efficiency and helped a company’s bottom line. Along with these benefits, the need has arisen for workers to be able to remotely access their corporate network, with appropriate security measures in place. In general terms, authentication is the process of attempting to verify the (digital) identity of the sender of a communication such as a log in request. The sender may be someone using a computer, the computer itself, or a computer program. A computer system should only be used by those who are authorized to do so, therefore there must be a measure in place to detect and exclude any unauthorized access.
On a FortiGate unit, you can control access to network resources by defining lists of authorized users, called user groups. To use a particular resource, such as a network or a VPN tunnel, the user must:
•belong to one of the user groups that is allowed access
•correctly enter a user name and password to prove his or her identity, if asked to do so
This process is called authentication.
You can configure authentication for:
•any firewall policy with Action set to ACCEPT
•SSL VPNs
•PPTP and L2TP VPNs
•a dialup IPSec VPN set up as an XAUTH server (Phase 1)
•a dialup IPSec VPN that accepts user group authentication as a peer ID
FortiOS v3.0 MR7 User Authentication User Guide |
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