Implementation Guide › Architectural Considerations › Implementation Considerations › Identify User Stores

Identify User Stores

SiteMinder can authenticate and authorize users through one or more connections to existing user stores in your enterprise network. After you identify the applications to secure, consider the following questions:

• Do the applications use a centralized user store or use separate user stores for authentication?
• If the applications use separate stores, does this project include a task to centralize the user identities into a single store?
• Do the applications use the same store to authenticate and authorize users? Or is a separate store or stores used for authorization?

Identifying the stores each application uses helps you to:

• Identify the user store connections a SiteMinder Administrator must configure in a SiteMinder policy domain to protect the resource.

  Note: For more information about configuring user store connections within a domain, see the Policy Server Configuration Guide.

• Determine if your environment requires the SiteMinder directory mapping feature. By default, SiteMinder assumes that users are authenticated and authorized against the same user store or stores. However, you can configure a SiteMinder policy domain to authenticate against one or more stores and authorize against others.

  Note: For more information about directory mapping, see the Policy Server Configuration Guide.

When gathering information about each application, use a table similar to the following to organize information: