Managing LDAP
LDAP is an open industry standard application protocol that is used to access and manage directory information over IP. You can consider it as a central repository of username and passwords, thus providing applications and services the flexibility to validate users by connecting with the LDAP.
The security system of the Appliance distinguishes between two types of users:
End users with specific access or no access to sensitive data. These users are managed through the User Management screen in the Web UI. For more information about user management, refer here.
Administrative users who manage the security policies, for example, “Admin” users who grant or deny access to end users.
In this section, the focus is on managing administrative users. The Administrative users connect to the management interfaces in Web UI or CLI, while the end users connect to the specific security modules they have been allowed access to. For example, a database table may need to be accessed by the end users, while the security policies for access to the table are specified by the Administrative users.
LDAP Tools available in the Administration menu include three tools explained in the following table.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Specify LDAP Server | Reconfigure all client-side components to use a specific LDAP. To authenticate users, the data security platform supports three modes for integration with directory services: Protegrity LDAP Server, Proxy Authentication, and Local LDAP Server. - Protegrity LDAP: In this mode, all administrative operations such as policy management, key management, etc. are handled by users that are part of the Protegrity LDAP. This mode can be used to configure or authenticate with either local or remote appliance product. - Proxy Authentication: In this mode, you can import users from an external LDAP to ESA. ESA is responsible for authorization of users, while the external LDAP is responsible for authentication of users. - Reset LDAP Server Settings: In this mode, an administrative user can reset the configuration to the default configuration using admin credentials. |
| Configure Local LDAP settings | Configure your LDAP to be accessed from the other machines. |
| Local LDAP Monitor | Examine how many LDAP operations per second are running. |