User Authentication and Management

By definition, portals imply content and functionality tailored to individual users. The first step is to identify the users accessing the portal. For some portal applications, such as Web storefronts, this may be accomplished through weak user identification - cookies, for example. However, for other portals, especially intranet portals, user authentication has to be stronger, requiring secure user IDs and passwords. Authentication can cause problems, however, if the different systems brought together on the portal each requires its own user ID and password. The key to keeping a portal usable is for the users to authenticate themselves once - when signing on to the portal or system - and then have access to all the content and functionality that the portal offers. This is known as single sign-on (SSO), and requires that the various components aggregated on the portal utilize or integrate with the same network authentication scheme.

Once sign on has been processed a user can be managed in any number of ways that allows, for example, access to some areas of the site and not others.