Why and when to perform this task
WebSphere Application Server plays an integral part of the multiple-tier enterprise computing framework. WebSphere Application Server adopts the open architecture paradigm and provides many plug-in points to integrate with enterprise software components to provide end-to-end security. WebSphere Application Server plug-in points are based on standard Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specifications wherever applicable. The WebSphere Application Server development team is actively involved in various standard bodies to externalize and to standardize plug-in interfaces.
Terminology
Firewalls can be used to create demilitarized zones, which serve as machines that are isolated from both the public Internet and other machines in the configuration. This isolation improves portal security, especially for sensitive back-end resources such as databases.
The Web server plug-in
WebSphere Application Server provides the infrastructure to run application logic and to communicate with the internal back-end systems and database that Web applications and enterprise beans can access. WebSphere Application Server has a built in HyperText Transport Protocol SSL (HTTPS) server that can accept client requests. A typical configuration, however, places WebSphere Application Server behind the domain firewall for better protection. A WebSphere Application Server plug-in to the Web server configuration can redirect Web requests to WebSphere Application Server. WebSphere Application Server provides plug-ins for many popular Web servers.
You can configure WebSphere Application Server and the Web server plug-in to communicate through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) channels. You can configure a WebSphere Application Server HTTP server to open communication channels with a restricted set of Web server plug-ins only.
You can configure the HTTP server to require client certificate authentication with self-signed certificates and to trust only the signer certificate.
The WebSphere Application Server plug-in routes HTTP requests according to the virtual host and port configuration and URL pattern matching. Client authentication and finer-grained access control are handled by WebSphere Application Server behind the firewall.
Tivoli WebSEAL
In cases where the Web server can contain sensitive data and direct access is not required, the following configuration uses Tivoli WebSEAL to shield a Web server from unauthorized requests. WebSEAL is a reverse proxy security server (RPSS) that uses Tivoli Access Manager to perform coarse-grained access control to filter out unauthorized requests before they reach the domain firewall. WebSEAL uses Tivoli Access Manager to perform access control.
User registry implementations
WebSphere Application Server supports various user registry implementations through the pluggable user registry interface.
WebSphere Application Server ships a Local OS user registry implementation for Windows, AIX, AS/400, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
WebSphere Application Server also supports users in developing their own custom registry and plug-in through the pluggable user registry interface. When integrated with a third-party security provider, WebSphere Application Server can share the user registry with the third-party security provider. In the particular example of integrating with WebSEAL, you can configure WebSphere Application Server to use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user registry, which can be shared with WebSEAL and Tivoli Access Manager. Moreover, you can configure WebSphere Application Server to use the Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA) mechanism, which supports the trust association interceptor plug-in point.
When configured to use the LDAP user registry, WebSphere Application Server uses LDAP to perform authentication. The client ID and password are passed from WebSphere Application Server to the LDAP server. You can configure WebSphere Application Server to set up an SSL connection to LDAP so that passwords are visible. To set up an SSL connection from WebSphere Application Server to the LDAP server, refer to Configuring Secure Sockets Layer for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol client.
J2EE Connector Architecture (J2CA)
WebSphere Application Server supports the J2EE Connector Architecture. J2CA or JCA can be used to abbreviate J2EE Connector Architecture, but this documentation uses J2CA. The connector architecture defines a standard interface for WebSphere Application Server to connect to heterogeneous enterprise information systems (EIS). Examples of EIS include database systems, transaction processing, such as CICS, and messaging such as Message Queue (MQ).
The EIS implementation of environments, servers and monitors can perform authentication and access control to protect resources and business data. Resource adapters authenticate EIS. The authentication data can be provided either by application code or by WebSphere Application Server. WebSphere Application Server provides a principal mapping plug-in point. A principal mapping module plug-in maps the authenticated client principal to a password credential, that is, user ID and password, for the EIS security domain. WebSphere Application Server ships a default principal mapping module, which maps any authenticated client principal to a configured pair of user IDs and passwords.
You can configure each connector to use a different set of IDs and passwords. For a description on how to configure J2CA principal mapping user IDs and passwords, refer to Managing J2EE Connector Architecture authentication data entries.
Mapping modules
A principal mapping module is a special purpose Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) login module. You can develop your own principal mapping module to fit your particular business application environment. For detailed steps on developing and configuring a custom principal mapping module, refer to the articles, Developing your own J2C principal mapping module, and Configuring application logins for Java Authentication and Authorization Service.
WebSphere MQseries
To work around this problem, create a file system for the embedded messaging component working data on UNIX. Before you install the embedded messaging component of WebSphere Application Server on UNIX platforms, consider creating and mounting a file system called /var/mqm. Use a partition strategy with a separate volume for the WebSphere MQ data. This means that other system activity is not affected if a large amount of WebSphere MQ work builds up.
Allow 50MB as a minimum for a WebSphere MQ server. You need less space in the /var/mqm file system for a WebSphere MQ client (typically 15MB).
Resource Access Control Facility (RACF)
Related concepts
Trust associations
Related tasks
Configuring IBM HTTP Server for Secure Sockets Layer mutual authentication
Configuring the Web server plug-in for Secure Sockets Layer
Configuring Secure Sockets Layer
Configuring trust association interceptors
Configuring Lightweight Third Party Authentication
Configuring single signon
Configuring user registries
Configuring Lightweight Directory Access Protocol user registries
Configuring Lightweight Directory Access Protocol search filters
Developing custom user registries
Configuring custom user registries
Migrating custom user registries
Developing your own J2C principal mapping module
Configuring application logins for Java Authentication and Authorization
Service
Related reference
Supported directory services
Custom user registries