Learning about authentication, permissions, and security

Authentication in ContentReporter

About Authentication

The ContentReporter server authenticates a username-password combination each time a user logs in. ContentReporter gives you the ability to simultaneously use its own built-in "Local" authentication, and either a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server or an NT LAN Manager (NTLM) to authenticate users. A Local user is a login account maintained in the ContentReporter application.

Note
Adding and deleting groups to set permissions in ContentReporter for LDAP or NTLM authentication only adds or deletes them from the ContentReporter database. These actions have no effect on your organization's LDAP or NTLM database.

Authentication methods

The following screen highlights the Authentication Method drop-down list on the Administration Authentication tab.

LDAP and NTLM failover to Local authentication

Local users (such as the initial "admin" and "guest" users) can still log into ContentReporter when you select LDAP or NTLM. When you select LDAP or NTLM as the authentication method, the ContentReporter server checks each login attempt with that method. If a login authentication fails, the ContentReporter server attempts to authenticate the user name-password combination with its Local authentication. To completely secure the ContentReporter server with LDAP or NTLM authentication, you must also set permissions for (or delete) all Local user accounts.

The relationship between user and group permissions

You can set permissions and security for groups and for Local users. You cannot set permissions or security for individual users with NTLM and LDAP authentication. If you set permissions or security on the group level, the permissions affect all users in the group. For example, if you take away all Administration privileges from the Guest group, no user in the Guest group can have Administration privileges. Each Local user you create must be a member of either the Admin, Guest, or User Local group. In its initial configuration, ContentReporter has two Local users: "admin" (password "admin") and "guest" (password "guest").

Note
When a user or group has two or more different permissions or security settings, the most restrictive permissions or security setting overrides the more permissive setting(s).