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  7. <B><CENTER>What is Acegi Security?</CENTER></B>
  8. <HR>
  9. <BR>
  10. Acegi Security is a powerful, flexible security solution for enterprise software,
  11. with a particular emphasis on applications that use
  12. <A href="http://www.springframework.org/">Spring</A>. Using Acegi Security provides your
  13. applications with comprehensive authentication, authorization, instance-based access control,
  14. channel security and human user detection capabilities.
  15. <BR>
  16. <HR>
  17. <B><CENTER>Key Features</CENTER></B>
  18. <HR>
  19. <BR>
  20. <UL>
  21. <LI><B>Stable and mature.</B> Acegi Security 1.0.0 was released in May 2006 after
  22. more than two and a half years of use in large production software projects, 70,000+ downloads
  23. and hundreds of community contributions.
  24. In terms of release numbering, we also use the <A
  25. href="http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html">Apache APR Project
  26. Versioning Guidelines</A> so that you can easily identify release
  27. compatibility.<BR><BR>
  28. <LI><B>Well documented:</B> All APIs are fully documented using
  29. <a href="http://acegisecurity.sourceforge.net/multiproject/acegi-security/apidocs/index.html">JavaDoc</a>,
  30. with almost 100 pages of
  31. <a href="reference.html">Reference Guide</a> documentation providing an easy-to-follow
  32. introduction. Even more documentation is provided on this web site, as
  33. shown in the left hand navigation sidebar.<BR><BR>
  34. <LI><B>Fast results:</B> View our <a href="suggested.html">suggested steps</a>
  35. for the fastest way to develop complex, security-compliant applications.<BR><BR>
  36. <LI><B>Enterprise-wide single sign on:</B> Using JA-SIG's open
  37. source <A href="http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/">Central Authentication
  38. Service</A> (CAS), the Acegi Security can participate
  39. in an enterprise-wide single sign on environment. You no longer need
  40. every web application to have its own authentication database. Nor are
  41. you restricted to single sign on across a single web container. Advanced
  42. single sign on features like proxy support and forced refresh of logins
  43. are supported by both CAS and Acegi Security.<BR><BR>
  44. <LI><B>Reuses your Spring expertise:</B> We use Spring application
  45. contexts for all configuration, which should help Spring developers get
  46. up-to-speed nice and quickly.<BR><BR>
  47. <LI><B>Domain object instance security:</B> In many applications it's
  48. desirable to define Access Control Lists (ACLs) for individual domain
  49. object instances. We provide a comprehensive ACL package with features
  50. including integer bit masking, permission inheritence (including
  51. blocking), a JDBC-backed ACL repository, caching and a pluggable,
  52. interface-driven design.<BR><BR>
  53. <LI><B>Non-intrusive setup:</B> The entire security system can operate
  54. within a single web application using the provided filters. There is no
  55. need to make special changes or deploy libraries to your Servlet or EJB
  56. container.<BR><BR>
  57. <LI><B>Full (but optional) container integration:</B> The credential
  58. collection and authorization capabilities of your Servlet or EJB
  59. container can be fully utilised via included "container adapters". We
  60. currently support Catalina (Tomcat), Jetty, JBoss and Resin, with
  61. additional containers easily added.<BR><BR>
  62. <LI><B>Keeps your objects free of security code:</B> Many applications
  63. need to secure data at the bean level based on any combination of
  64. parameters (user, time of day, authorities held, method being invoked,
  65. parameter on method being invoked....). This package gives you this
  66. flexibility without adding security code to your Spring business
  67. objects.<BR><BR>
  68. <LI><B>After invocation security:</B> Acegi Security can not only protect
  69. methods from being invoked in the first place, but it can also
  70. deal with the objects returned from the methods. Included implementations
  71. of after invocation security can throw an exception or mutate the returned
  72. object based on ACLs.<BR><BR>
  73. <LI><B>Secures your HTTP requests as well:</B> In addition to securing
  74. your beans, the project also secures your HTTP requests. No longer is it
  75. necessary to rely on web.xml security constraints. Best of all, your
  76. HTTP requests can now be secured by your choice of regular expressions
  77. or Apache Ant paths, along with pluggable authentication, authorization
  78. and run-as replacement managers.<BR><BR>
  79. <LI><B>Channel security:</B> Acegi Security can
  80. automatically redirect requests across an appropriate transport channel.
  81. Whilst flexible enough to support any of your "channel" requirements (eg
  82. the remote user is a human, not a robot), a common channel security
  83. feature is to ensure your secure pages will only be available over
  84. HTTPS, and your public pages only over HTTP. Acegi Security also
  85. supports unusual port combinations (including if accessed via an
  86. intermediate server like Apache) and pluggable transport decision
  87. managers.<BR><BR>
  88. <LI><B>Supports HTTP BASIC authentication:</B> Perfect for remoting
  89. protocols or those web applications that prefer a simple browser pop-up
  90. (rather than a form login), Acegi Security can directly process HTTP
  91. BASIC authentication requests as per RFC 1945.<BR><BR>
  92. <LI><B>Supports HTTP Digest authentication:</B> For greater security than
  93. offered by BASIC authentcation, Acegi Security also supports Digest Authentication
  94. (which never sends the user's password across the wire). Digest Authentication
  95. is widely supported by modern browsers. Acegi Security's implementation complies
  96. with both RFC 2617 and RFC 2069.<BR><BR>
  97. <LI><B>Computer Associates Siteminder support:</B> Authentication can be
  98. delegated through to CA's Siteminder solution, which is common in large
  99. corporate environments.<BR><BR>
  100. <LI><B>X509 (Certificate) support:</B> Acegi Security can easily read
  101. client-side X509 certificates for authenticating users.<BR><BR>
  102. <LI><B>LDAP Support:</B> Do you have an LDAP directory? Acegi Security can
  103. happily authenticate against it.<BR><BR>
  104. <LI><B>Tag library support:</B> Your JSP files can use our taglib
  105. to ensure that protected content like links and messages are only
  106. displayed to users holding the appropriate granted authorities. The taglib
  107. also fully integrates with Acegi Security's ACL services, and
  108. obtaining extra information about the logged-in principal.<BR><BR>
  109. <LI><B>Configuration via IoC XML, Commons Attributes, or JDK 5 Annotations:</B> You
  110. select the method used to configure your security environment. The
  111. project supports configuration via Spring application contexts, as well
  112. as Jakarta Commons Attributes and Java 5's annotations feature. Some users
  113. (such as those building content management systems) pull configuration data
  114. from a database, which exemplifies Acegi Security's flexible configuration
  115. metadata system.<BR><BR>
  116. <LI><B>Various authentication backends:</B> We include the ability to
  117. retrieve your user and granted authority definitions from an XML
  118. file, JDBC datasource or Properties file. Alternatively, you can implement the
  119. single-method UserDetailsService interface and obtain authentication details from
  120. anywhere you like.<BR><BR>
  121. <LI><B>Event support:</B> Building upon Spring's
  122. <CODE>ApplicationEvent</CODE> services, you can write your own listeners
  123. for authentication-related events, along with authorisation-related events.
  124. This enables you to implement account lockout and audit log systems, with
  125. complete decoupling from Acegi Security code.<BR><BR>
  126. <LI><B>Easy integration with existing databases:</B> Our implementations
  127. have been designed to make it very easy to use your existing
  128. authentication schema and data (without modification). Of course,
  129. you can also provide your own Data Access Object if you wish.<BR><BR>
  130. <LI><B>Caching:</B> Acegi Security integrates with Spring's <A
  131. href="http://ehcache.sourceforge.net/">EHCACHE</A> factory.
  132. This flexibility means your database (or other authentication
  133. repository) is not repeatedly queried for authentication
  134. information.<BR><BR>
  135. <LI><B>Pluggable architecture:</B> Every critical aspect of the package
  136. has been modelled using high cohesion, loose coupling, interface-driven
  137. design principles. You can easily replace, customise or extend parts of
  138. the package.<BR><BR>
  139. <LI><B>Startup-time validation:</B> Every critical object dependency and
  140. configuration parameter is validated at application context startup
  141. time. Security configuration errors are therefore detected early and
  142. corrected quickly.<BR><BR>
  143. <LI><B>Remoting support:</B> Does your project use a rich client? Not a
  144. problem. Acegi Security integrates with standard Spring remoting
  145. protocols, because it automatically processes the HTTP BASIC
  146. authentication headers they present. Add our BASIC authentication filter
  147. to your web.xml and you're done. You can also easily use RMI or Digest
  148. authentication for your rich clients with a simple configuration statement.<BR><BR>
  149. <LI><B>Advanced password encoding:</B> Of course, passwords in your
  150. authentication repository need not be in plain text. We support both SHA
  151. and MD5 encoding, and also pluggable "salt" providers to maximise
  152. password security. Acegi Security doesn't even need to see the password
  153. if your backend can use a bind-based strategy for authentication (such as
  154. an LDAP directory, or a database login).<BR><BR>
  155. <LI><B>Run-as replacement:</B> The system fully supports
  156. temporarily replacing the authenticated principal for the duration of the web
  157. request or bean invocation. This enables you to build public-facing
  158. object tiers with different security configurations than your backend
  159. objects.<BR><BR>
  160. <LI><B>Transparent security propagation:</B> Acegi Security can automatically
  161. transfer its core authentication information from one machine to another,
  162. using a variety of protocols including RMI and Spring's HttpInvoker.<BR><BR>
  163. <LI><B>Compatible with HttpServletRequest's security methods:</B> Even though
  164. Acegi Security can deliver authentication using a range of pluggable mechanisms
  165. (most of which require no web container configuration), we allow you to access
  166. the resulting Authentication object via the getRemoteUser() and other
  167. security methods on HttpServletRequest.<BR><BR>
  168. <LI><B>Unit tests:</B> A must-have of any quality security project, unit
  169. tests are included. Our unit test coverage is very high, as shown in the
  170. <a href="multiproject/acegi-security/clover/index.html">coverage report</a>.<BR><BR>
  171. <LI><B>Built by Maven:</B> This assists you in effectively reusing the Acegi
  172. Security artifacts in your own Maven-based projects.<BR><BR>
  173. <LI><B>Supports your own unit tests:</B> We provide a number of classes
  174. that assist with your own unit testing of secured business objects. For
  175. example, you can change the authentication identity and its associated
  176. granted authorities directly within your test methods.<BR><BR>
  177. <LI><B>Peer reviewed:</B> Whilst nothing is ever completely secure,
  178. using an open source security package leverages the continuous design
  179. and code quality improvements that emerge from peer review.<BR><BR>
  180. <LI><B>Community:</B> Well-known for its supportive community, Acegi Security
  181. has an active group of developers and users. Visit our project resources (below)
  182. to access these services.<BR><BR>
  183. <LI><B>Apache license.</B> You can confidently use Acegi Security in your project.<BR><BR></LI></UL><BR><B>
  184. <HR>
  185. <CENTER>Project Resources</CENTER></B>
  186. <HR>
  187. <BR>
  188. <CENTER>
  189. <A href="http://forum.springframework.org/"><B>Support Forums</B></A><BR><BR>
  190. <A href="mail-lists.html"><B>Developer Mailing List</B></A><BR><BR>
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