Web Services Security Guides › CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security Policy Configuration Guide › Configure Authentication Schemes to Verify User Identities Obtained from Web Service Requests › Authentication Scheme Overview

Authentication Scheme Overview

CA SiteMinder® Web Services Security authentication schemes provide a way to collect credentials from an XML message request sent to a protected web service and determine the identity of the user represented by those credentials.

Authentication schemes must be configured using the Administrative UI. During authentication, SiteMinder WSS Agents communicate with the Policy Server to determine the proper credentials that must be retrieved from the request message.

This chapter discusses general information for working with authentication schemes in the Administrative UI, then provides separate sections that explain how to configure each supported scheme using authentication scheme templates. These templates provide the Policy Server with most of the information it needs to process a scheme. An administrator must complete the configuration of an authentication scheme by supplying implementation specific information, such as server IP addresses, or shared secrets required to initialize a scheme.