Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory

Enterprise Security

Security is of paramount importance in an enterprise environment. Every operating system that is designed to run in a multiuser environment has a security scheme. This chapter looks at two basic issues in security: authentication and authorization.

Authentication asks the question, "Who are you?" Several methods are available for identifying users, computers, and processes in Windows 2000. In most situations, you'll require the authenticating user to provide a password using an authentication protocol. The default is Kerberos v5, but you also can use NTLM v1 and v2 for backward compatibility with down-level clients. You also can use X.509 certificates through a public key infrastructure (PKI) to authenticate with smart cards ...