Common Terminology Across Security Realms

Common Terminology Across Security Realms

Introduction

This section briefly defines the terms that are common to all of the security methods that the access server supports.

Accounting Host

A security server that accepts and records accounting information from the access server.

Authentication Host

A security server that provides authentication or authorization information to the access server.

Default Realm

One realm in the access server can be specified to be the default realm. The only advantage of the default realm is that, when logging in, the user can omit the @realm- name portion of the login identification. There is no other special meaning to be the default realm. To change the default realm name, you must first set any current (default) realm name to be NODEFAULT. Then assign another as DEFAULT.

Login Retries and Timeouts

The access server allows you to configure the number of times to retry contacting a server before timing out a login attempt.You can specify the maximum number of retries to potentially alternate authentication hosts. Hosts are tried round-robin fashion until the login attempt times out. Each realm can point to its own list of security hosts.

Secrets

A text string or value that ensures that the data exchanged between the access server and the security host is valid. You must configure a secret on the access server for RADIUS. You can also configure one for Kerberos. The secret for SecurID will automatically be assigned by the SecurID authentication host.

Once configured, the secret is never displayed on the access server. There are privileged access server commands to erase and to reenter secrets. The secret is assigned as a realm parameter, and applies to all security hosts in the realm.

22-4 Managing Access Server Security