Federation Manager Guide › Federation Manager and SiteMinder Integration › Integrate with SiteMinder using the SiteMinder Connector

Integrate with SiteMinder using the SiteMinder Connector

A deployed SiteMinder system can integrate with Federation Manager to allow authentication and authorization using SiteMinder. This integration is accomplished using the SiteMinder Connector, a software component included with Federation Manager.

Important! You select the SiteMinder Connector when you install Federation Manager. If you want to change this selection, you must re-install.

The SiteMinder Connector acts as a SiteMinder agent that can use an existing SiteMinder user session to create a new Federation Manager user session, and vice-versa. The SiteMinder user session information is stored in the SMSESSION cookie, and the Federation Manager user session information is stored in the FEDSESSION cookie.

Consider the following integration examples:

• For a user who has authenticated at SiteMinder and has an SMSESSION, the SiteMinder Connector creates a Federation Manager session for this user based on the contents of the SMSESSION cookie. With this session information Federation Manager is then able to generate a SAML assertion for this user. With this assertion the user can access protected federated resources at the relying party.
• For a user who has authenticated at Federation Manager, the SiteMinder Connector can create a SiteMinder session for this user from the contents from the FEDSESSION cookie. The user can then access SiteMinder-protected resources.

The SiteMinder Connector requires configuration in the SiteMinder environment and in the Federation Manager environment, as shown in the following diagram: