Integrating Django with Centralised Identity Management Systems

Fraser Tweedale (~frasertweedale)


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Description:

Most Django developers are familiar with authentication and authorisation on the open web, but the requirements and technologies used inside companies and large organisations are different:

  • Identities and groups are probably stored in an external identity management system's directory rather than in an application's database tables.

  • Authorisation decisions will be based on group membership and policies that are defined outside the application.

  • Users may be expected or required to use a single sign-on technology such as Kerberos or SAML to authenticate to applications.

This talk will familiarise the audience with these technologies and demonstrate how Django applications can be integrated with an identity management system to meet business requirements while providing a positive user experience. Particular technologies covered will include:

  • FreeIPA: an open-source identity management solution, for defining users, groups and authorisation policies

  • mod_auth_gssapi / mod_auth_kerb: Apache modules for Kerberos authentication

  • mod_lookup_identity: Apache module to retrieve user information from a directory

The talk will conclude with discussion about upcoming Kerberos features, techniques for dealing with multiple authentication methods, and progress in making identity management integration easier for Django developers.

People developing or deploying Django or other web applications in business environments or for large open source projects with centralised identity management will get the most out of this talk.

Prerequisites:

Attendees should have a passing familiarity with HTTP and the Apache web server.

Content URLs:

http://www.freeipa.org/page/Web_App_Authentication

Speaker Info:

Fraser works at Red Hat on the FreeIPA centralised identity management system and Dogtag Certificate System. He cares about security and cryptography (and making it easy to use correctly!) and is deeply interested in functional programming, type theory and theorem proving.

Speaker Links:

  • https://github.com/frasertweedale
  • https://twitter.com/hackuador

Section: Security
Type: Talks
Target Audience: Beginner
Last Updated: