[Techtalk] Administration, was Re: Hacked on Solaris

[Caitlyn Martin]

Hi, Poppy,
> 
> And a good portion of the time, I'd suspect (not being an admin myself
> who has to deal with it), the programs themselves make central
> authentication difficult.
> 
> After all, just to boot up at work, I have to log on to the network,
> log on to our customer database, and log on to the Domino server.
> That's 3 different software/security protocals to jump through, and if
> they all relied on the Windows authentication, we'd all be in trouble
> :P

Microsoft, Novell, Lotus, most UNIX flavors, Linux, etc... are LDAP 3
compliant.  There actually really and truly is a cross-platform
standard.  While some apps may not be able to use an LDAP based
solution, most of your main authentication can.  A Radius server is
another (albeit commercial) cross platform solution.  There are others.

The technology is out there.  The only reason it's not implemented was
covered in my last e-mail.  FWIW, we already have central authentication
for UNIX boxes and mounts through NIS here.  I'm going to be developing
a more comprehensive plan and implementing it :)

All the best,
Caity