Administration Guide › Using the SPS with Federation Security Services › SPS Use Cases in a SiteMinder Federated Environment › Use Case 4: Extended Networks
Use Case 4: Extended Networks
In Use Case 4, smcompany.com, ahealthco.com, and discounts.com all participate in an extended federated network. This case is an extension of the use cases presented previously.
In this network, not all of ahealthco.com's customers work at smcompany.com, so ahealthco.com provides discounts to its customers by establishing a relationship between themselves and discounts.com. Since ahealthco.com maintains user identities for every customer, it is possible for ahealthco.com to manage local credentials, such as a password for each user. By managing local credentials, ahealthco.com can authenticate users and provide single sign-on access to its partners.
In this extended network, the users access each Web site differently:
- User1 accesses health benefit information at ahealthco.com’s web site. User 1 may also choose to access partsco.com's Web site by clicking on the PartsSupplier link at smcompany.com, her employee portal. She can also click a link at her employee portal to access discounts at discounts.com.
- User2 authenticates at ahealthco.com's web site and clicks a link to access discounts at discounts.com, without having to sign on to discounts.com's web site. The discounts presented to User2 reflect the business arrangement between ahealthco.com and discounts.com. Because User2 is an employee of smcompany.com, he can also click a link at ahealthco.com and access the employee portal at smcompany.com without having to sign on to smcompany.com's web site.
- User3 (not shown in example), is a customer of ahealthco.com, but is not an employee of smcompany.com. User3 authenticates at ahealthco.com's web site and clicks a link to access discounts at discounts.com without having to sign on to discounts.com's web site. The discounts presented to User3 reflect the business arrangement between ahealthco.com and discounts.com. Since User3 is not an employee of smcompany.com, User3 cannot access smcompany.com's web site.
More information:
Solution 4: SSO in an Extended Network
