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Security
Configure different security features to adequately protect business assets and resources in the data model when using BigFix Inventory.
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.

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 connection to a directory server
    To use LDAP for authentication of BigFix Inventory users, you must first configure a connection to your directory server.
  - Linking users to directories
    To complete an authentication process through LDAP, you must create a user that would link to the created directory.
  - User provisioning
    After configuring a Directory Server, you can integrate its users with BigFix Inventory using the LDAP protocol. With user provisioning, you can integrate whole groups of users instead of linking each of them separately.
  - Integrating users with Web Reports
    You can use the Web Reports component to allow your Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Web Reports users to access 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.
- 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.

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.