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Security
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
Configuring and enabling single sign-on
Available from 9.2.1. You can now use the two-factor authentication and use single sign-on to log on to BigFix Inventory and maintain login consistency with other applications in the enterprise. You can configure BigFix Inventory to use two-factor authentication with single sign-on based either on the exchange of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and Microsoft™ Active Directory Federation Services as Identity Provider or you can use the IBM Lightweight Third-Party Authentication (LTPA) technology and IBM Security Access Manager for Web as the authentication service.
Option 1: Configuring single sign-on based on Security Assertion Markup Language token
You can configure single sign-on based on a Security Access Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and an external Identity Provider server.

Security
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
- Flow of data
  There are several different interactions that occur between the components of the BigFix Inventory infrastructure and between the user and tool.
- Security configuration scenarios
  Check what security options need to be enabled on the BigFix server and the BigFix Inventory server to achieve each of the supported security scenarios.
- Configuring secure communication
  To ensure secure communication, BigFix Inventory uses public key cryptography, which is based on algorithms that use two separate keys, a private key and a public key. This key pair is used to encrypt and decrypt communication.
- Assuring compliance with federal encryption standards
  You can configure BigFix Inventory to be compliant with the Federal Information Processing Standard requirements that are related to encryption.
- Authenticating users with LDAP
  BigFix Inventory supports authentication through a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol server. To use this feature, you must configure the BigFix Inventory server.
- Configuring and enabling single sign-on
  Available from 9.2.1. You can now use the two-factor authentication and use single sign-on to log on to BigFix Inventory and maintain login consistency with other applications in the enterprise. You can configure BigFix Inventory to use two-factor authentication with single sign-on based either on the exchange of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and Microsoft™ Active Directory Federation Services as Identity Provider or you can use the IBM Lightweight Third-Party Authentication (LTPA) technology and IBM Security Access Manager for Web as the authentication service.
  - Option 1: Configuring single sign-on based on Security Assertion Markup Language token
    You can configure single sign-on based on a Security Access Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and an external Identity Provider server.
    - Step 1: Configuring single sign-on settings in BigFix Inventory
      As the first step, configure single sign-on settings in BigFix Inventory.
    - Step 2: Configuring Identity Provider for single sign-on
      As the second step, configure BigFix Inventory server as a relying party to consume claims from the Identity Provider. Perform the configuration based on the spMetadata.xml file that you downloaded from BigFix Inventory.
    - Step 3: Enabling the SAML single sign-on
      As the final step, enable single sign-on in the BigFix Inventory web user interface.
    - Reverting disabled SSO configuration for SAML
      You can revert to the default SAML SSO configuration with single sign-on disabled if there are problems with logging in to the application.
  - Option 2: Configuring SSO based on LTPA
    You can configure single sign-on based on IBM Lightweight Third-Party Authentication(LTPA)with ® IBM Security Access Manager for Web.
  - Creating single sign-on users
    To complete an authentication process through single sign-on, you must create users that can later log in to BigFix Inventory.
  - Logging out of the BigFix Inventory server
    To log out of the BigFix Inventory user interface, simply clear your browser history and restart the browser.
  - Disabling the single sign-on configuration
    You can disable the SSO configuration on the Single Sign-on Settings pane.
  - Deleting the single sign-on configuration
    You can delete the SSO configuration on the Single Sign-on Settings pane.
  - Modifying port in BigFix Inventory that has single sign-on enabled
    Modifying the port number on the Server Settings pane in BigFix Inventory while single sign-on is enabled invalidates the single sign-on configuration. To properly modify the port, you must repeat the single sign-on configuration steps.
  - Configuring SSO keystore passwords and encryption
    Configure unique passwords to the SSO keystores, and encrypt them with the AES encryption algorithm.
- Configuring passwords and encryption mechanisms
  To improve the application security, define a security policy for user passwords. You can also configure passwords and encryption mechanisms for the keystore in which the passwords are stored, and the BigFix Inventory database.
- Configuring user account lockout
  Available from 9.2.8. By default, user account is locked for 5 minutes after the user attempts to log in to BigFix Inventory more than 10 times within 5 minutes. You can change the default settings or disable the user account lockout.
- Configuring VM Manager Tool to accept trusted VM manager certificates
  By default, the VM Manager Tool accepts all VM manager certificates regardless of whether they are trusted or not. You can change the default behavior to ensure that only trusted certificates are accepted by the VM Manager Tool.
- Relays
  Relays lighten both upstream and downstream burdens on the server. Rather than communicating directly with a server, clients can instead be instructed to communicate with designated relays, considerably reducing both server load and client and server network traffic.

Option 1: Configuring single sign-on based on Security Assertion Markup Language token

You can configure single sign-on based on a Security Access Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and an external Identity Provider server.

The following entities participate in the exchange of authentication data:

Application User: A person who uses several applications in one domain and wants to single sign-on to these applications.
Service Provider: The application that requests the authentication service. In this case, it is BigFix Inventory.
Identity Provider: The service that authenticates the application users. BigFix Inventory supports only Active Directory Federation Services.

A web user authenticates to a SAML Identity Provider, which produces a SAML assertion. A SAML assertion is an XML-formatted token that is used to transfer user identity and attribute information from the Identity Provider of a user to a trusted Service Provider as part of a single sign-on request. The Service Provider consumes the SAML assertion to establish a security context for the web user.

The following diagram shows steps that are performed during a typical single sign-on based on the exchange of the SAML token.
Exchange of Security Access Markup Language token

Exchange of Security Access Markup Language token

Procedure

The following scenario presents a typical workflow of configuring BigFix Inventory to work with Active Directory Federation Services. However, you might want to use other software products for enabling single sign-on in your infrastructure.