OT: Looking for a reliable 3rd party AD Provider

[Andrew Cowie]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > But 3rd party?  Who would be insane enough to outsource your system's
> > authentication?  What if your internet connection goes down?

and

On Sat, 2007-03-31 at 00:45 -0400, Robert Brockway wrote:
> I would have to fully agree with Lennart - don't try to authenticate your 
> boxes with an offsite authentication system.

Actually, this is one of the services that SalesForce provides (although
in the context of customer relationship management).

We have a client who uses it as the single-sign-on mechanism for all
their [public!] web access granting. Yup, that means that this firm's
entire internet presence relies on the outsourced authentication
provided by salesforce.com.

Insane.

Mind you, other than the conceptual problem, they have a good reputation
for making people happy, so {shrug}. And single-sign-on has been the
holy grail for many a company, so it's clear why they have a good
business for actually providing APIs to achieve it. I just don't happen
to think it's trustworthy from a technical, operations, privacy, or
security standpoint to delegate authentication in this manner - and that
makes it a massive hole from a fiduciary responsibility standpoint; I
wouldn't want to be a Director of a company doing this.

AfC
Sydney

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Operational Dynamics Consulting Group

http://www.operationaldynamics.com/
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