slide decks from my session at SharePointalooza 2015

1. THE WHO, WHAT AND WHY
OF ACTIVE DIRECTORY
FEDERATION SERVICES
(ADFS)

2. Be Sure To Thank Our Awesome Sponsors!

3. ABOUT ME
• Co-author, SharePoint 2013 Administrators Pocket Guide
• MCT, MCTIP: SharePoint 2010, MCTS: Project Server 2010
• 12 years working on the SharePoint platform in a variety of positions.
• 7 years of instructional/training delivery experience.
• My blogs:
• http://summit7systems.com/author/jay.simcox/
• http://www.sharepointmechanic.com/
• Contact Me:
• Email: Jay.Simcox@summit7systems.com
• Twitter: @jaysimcox/@SPHoneyBadger
Senior Consultant/Instructor, Summit 7 Systems/Mindsharp
Huntsville, AL

4. Work performed in 31 States
Employees in 6 States
100% CSAT Satisfaction 2 Microsoft MVPs 30+ Published Books 1 Office Dog
About Summit 7 Systems

5. AGENDA

6. AGENDA

7. THE FIRST QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING!Is AD FS the right solution for my requirement?

9. • Reverse-proxy?
• Hybrid?
• Access from outside the corporate network?
• Access for partners or vendors?
• Device or role-based access?
• Single sign on (SSO)
IT DEPENDS….

11. WHO BENEFITS FROM ADFS - I?
• Implementing Organizations
– Easily share internal resources with external users.
– Create a role based security model.
– Possible to reduce overall licensing costs with additional servers
roles like Web Application Proxy (WA-P).
• Partner Organizations
– Easy access to external organization resources

12. WHO BENEFITS FROM ADFS - II?
• IT Staff
– Administrators
• No longer have to manage external user accounts or passwords.
• Centralized federated partner management.
• Extensible architecture allows for adding, modifying or creating
custom claims to support specific business processes.
– Developers
• Leveraging Windows Identity Foundation developers can build .NET
applications that rely on ADFS instead of an internal authentication
mechanism. These are known as “Claims-Aware” applications.

13. WHO BENEFITS FROM ADFS - III?
• End Users
– SSO experience across multiple applications and platforms.
– Reduced need for multiple logons
– Simplified password management (single password across
multiple platforms and applications).

15. WHAT IS ADFS?
• Not new, ADFS has been around since Windows Server
2003 R2.
• Windows Server 2012 R2 role.
• Allows for the secure sharing of identity information.
• Provides secure authentication to multiple systems
(SharePoint, Dynamics, Exchange, O365, etc…)
• Reduces administrative overhead involved with
managing “guest” or external AD account.

16. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF ADFS?
• Allows us to “easily” open applications to external
partners.
• Web based Single Sign On (SSO).
• Reduced administrative overhead managing guest
accounts and passwords.
• Supports the WS-Federation protocol.
• Partner or guest user account management by local
resources is not required.

17. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF ADFS? (CONTD.)
• Claim mapping defines claims in terms that each partner
organization understands.
• Claim mappings can be different for each partner
organization.
• Can leverage multiple claim types
– Identity Claims
– Group Claims
– Custom Claims
– Device Claims

18. ADFS LIMITATIONS
• Not an overly simple implementation.
• No support for on-premises Exchange.
• No access to Windows NT token based applications.
– No access to file shares or print servers.
– No access to AD resources.
– No access to Exchange (on-premises only).
– No connections to servers via RDP.
– No authentication to “older” web based applications.

20. HOW DOES ADFS WORK?
• Defines how applications acquire identity information about a user.
• Designed to specifically overcome limitations in other protocols.
• Designed to cross boundaries such as security realms, firewalls and different
platforms.
• Takes the burden of authentication off of applications.
• Requires configuration of multiple components
– SharePoint Security Token Service (STS)
– Token-signing certificate
– Identity Provider (IdP)
– Identity claim
– Realm
– SPTrustedIdentityTokenIssuer
– Relying party security token service
– Identity provider security token service

21. AUTHENTICATION IN SHAREPOINT
• Authentication is NOT Authorization
– Authentication – the process of verifying the identity of a user requesting access to a SharePoint resource.
– Authorization – the process of identifying an authenticated users permission to access the SharePoint
resource.
• Authentication protocols
– NTLM
– Kerberos
– Claims-based
– Open Authorization 2.0 (OAuth)
• Server to Server Authentication
• App authentication

22. NTLM PROCESS
1. The user requests a SharePoint site.
2. SharePoint sends a request for Windows
Credentials to the user in the form of a
login box asking for a username and
password.
3. The end user enters their Windows
credentials and submits them to
SharePoint.
4. SharePoint validates the users account
with AD.
5. SharePoint requests and receives the
users group membership from AD.
6. SharePoint creates a SharePoint security
token and sends the authorization code
and requested web page to the end user.
AD DS
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Users
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23. KERBEROS PROCESS
1. The Client sends an HTTP (GET) request as an anonymous user.
2. The WFE responds with a 401.2 (unauthorized: Login failed) and
with a WWW-Authenticate: Negotiate or WWW-Authenticate:
Kerberos header.
3. The client contacts the KDC on the domain controller requesting a
Kerberos ticket for the SPN (service-principal-name) referenced by
the client browser.
4. If the KDC finds a matching SPN it creates and encrypts a ticket and
returns it to the client.
5. The client creates the authenticator and returns it with the ticket to
the WFE. The WFE decrypts the ticket and determines identity and
checks permissions on the SharePoint server to see what access, if
any, is to be granted.
6. If access is permitted IIS contacts the SQL server through the Web
Application service.
7. The Web Application service requests a ticket for the SQL server
from the KDC.
8. If an SPN is found the KDC returns the ticket which the web
application uses to impersonate the user.
9. SQL Server checks the ticket from the Web Application service and
validates it and sends the data back to the WFE.
10. .NET compiles the .aspx page and sends it to the users browser.
Client
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AD DS

24. CLAIMS PROCESS
1. The end user hits the SharePoint site generating
an HTTP (GET) request.
2. SharePoint redirects the user to the Identity
Provider to get a security token.
3. The end user is prompted for credentials by the
Identity Provider.
4. The Identity Provider validates the provided
credentials with the authentication provider (in
this case AD DS) and if successful provides the
client a security token.
5. The Identity Provider sends the end user a SAML
security token.
6. The end user submits a new request to
SharePoint with the SAML token.
7. The SharePoint STS generates the SharePoint
security token, the FedAuth cookie and the
requested SharePoint site.
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AD DS
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AD FS
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Claim
Claim
Claim
Signature7 7
7

25. CLAIMS IN A NUTSHELL
• Claim: an assertion or statement of something as a fact.
• Could be any piece of data or information about a user.
• Digitally signed at creation.
• Claims must have an attribute to be used with SharePoint
• Do not rely on applications for authentication.
• Rely on security token services (STSs).
• Not just for identities, can also be used for roles and access rights.
• Commonly defined with Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)

26. THE TOKEN

28. WHAT WOULD AN ADFS IMPLEMENTATION LOOK
LIKE?

31. WHAT SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT?
• Search
• User Profile Service
• End user experience
• People-Picker
• Unique Identifier
• Authentication method (username/password, smart card,
RSASecureId).

32. BEST PRACTICES
• Use SAN certificates on the WA-P servers.
• Protect your ADFS servers as if they are Domain
Controllers.
• High availability should always be a part of the design.
Especially hybrid deployments.

33. Section
Header
Q & A

34. Be Sure To Thank Our Awesome Sponsors!

35. THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!