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This Common Capability covers underlying authentication and authorisation mechanisms required in portal solutions.

The Portals Security Common Capability allows a user to:

• authenticate him/herself
• authorize user’s operations in portal using third party authorization system or Role Based Access Control (RBAC) based internal portal mechanisms or both
• use integrated third party security services in common way.
• perform all subsequent operations using Single Sign On (SSO) mechanism

Motivation and foreseen Business Value

The motivation for this Common Capability comes directly from the Business Need for portal users’ authentication and provision of “single sign-on” authentication to external resources made accessible by portals for those users.

The implementation of this Common Capability in a portal solution will offer the users simplicity in access through a faster authentication process and interoperability of access and integration methods, which will improve the overall business processes. It is thus considered of high business importance.

Relationship to other Common Capabilities

Almost all the other identified Common Capabilities for Portals depend on this one. If Security is not implemented or it is weak, the main functionalities of the portal can still be accessed and used, although not in a secure way. However, security is important in a business environment.