Agent Guide › Overview › SiteMinder Identity Asserter (IA)

SiteMinder Identity Asserter (IA)

When configured in the WebLogic Security Framework, the SiteMinder Identity Asserter is responsible for handling the following request types:

• HTTP requests from users with preestablished SiteMinder sessions without challenging them for credentials (validating the session and obtaining user names from the associated SiteMinder session ticket cookies).
• HTTP and JAVA requests from users with X.509 certificates (obtaining user names from associated X.509 certificates and authenticating them against SiteMinder user directories).
• HTTP requests from users without preestablished SiteMinder sessions by challenging them for credentials using SiteMinder basic or advanced authentication schemes. A SiteMinder Web Agent provides authentication services for advanced authentication schemes.

Note: The SiteMinder IA always validates requests which contain SiteMinder session cookies or X.509 certificates; configure it to challenge other request types.

The SiteMinder IA then passes a valid user name and SiteMinder session information to an authentication provider for authentication within the WebLogic domain.

Note: If you only need to allow SiteMinder Single Sign-On (SSO) clients to access Web applications, you can use the SiteMinder Identity Asserter as a standalone component without any of the other SiteMinder Agent components.