End-user Authentication - Login Management

Authentication

Introduction

Access to iPassport by the users registered in an account can be controlled in several ways to help you keep your data secure.

• You can configure password complexity:
  • iPassport allows each account to customise their password complexity settings to force users to include a non-alphanumeric character, number or uppercase letter in their passwords. 
  • You can declare the number of failed login attempts you wish to allow and a lockout period.
• And, the system will carefully manage it:
  • When a user is changing their password the system will notify them if their new password does not match the requirements.
  • After the password preferences have been changed, the system will also inform users when they log into the system if their password does not match the new requirements and will prompt them to update it.
• You can set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and use apps to produce the verification codes.
• If you have a SAML single-sign-on service in your organisation, you can add iPassport to it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• User Logon Setting
• Unlocking Users
• Two Factor Setting
  • Configuring a 2-Factor Authenticator App
• SAML/ADFS
  • What is SAML
  • Identity Provider SAML Configuration Metadata
  • Configure iPassport to use SAML
  • SAML Certificate

User Logon Setting

Navigate to Administration -> Settings -> System Settings -> User Logon Settings.

• ‘Block re-use of previous password’. Once checked ensures that a user can never use a password that they have previously used within iPassport.
  
  
• ‘Lockout period (in minutes) after maximum failed consecutive logins reached’. If a ‘Maximum consecutive failed login before locking user account’ value is set then admin can define here the time period used to lock the user out, after they failed to login after maximum number of times, before allowing them to try again
  
  
• ‘Login Strategy’ sets which strategy will be used to log users in. This applies to the whole account.
  
  
  • iPassport Login - this consists of a username and password as seen before.
    
    
  • 2-Factor Authentication Login
    
    
  • SAML/ADFS
    
    
• ‘Maximum consecutive failed logins before locking user account’ admin can set how many consecutive failed logins a user can perform before being locked out of the system. If a Lockout period is set then the system will unlock the user’s account after this time has passed or admin can unlock the user.
  
  
• ‘Minimum Password Length’ is used to configure the minimum number of characters in a user’s password.
  
  
• ‘Password Expires after (days)’ is used to force users to change their passwords after a given number of days. Use 0 if the password should never expire.
  
  
• ‘Password should include a non alphanumeric character’ forces the user’s password to contain at least one special character (@&<= etc).
  
  
• ‘Password should include a number’ forces a user’s password to contain at least one number.
  
  
• ‘Password should include an uppercase letter’ forces a user to have at least one uppercase letter in their password.
  
  

Unlocking Users

If the system has a locked out user, admin with permission above will be able to unlock the user by navigating to Administration -> Users -> Search Users and using the ‘Filter Locked/Not locked ’ set to ‘Locked’.

To unlock a user click on ‘Locked Out (Click to Unlock)’ in the ‘Current Activity’ column. The system will ask if admin are sure they want to unlock the user, click ‘OK’ and a green banner will appear confirming the user is now unlocked.

Two Factor Setting

Two factor authentication allows an additional level of security to guard against password theft. When logging into iPassport, in addition to entering a username and password, users will be sent a code via email. Copy and paste this code into the field in order to access the system.

When using two factor authentication admin can choose to use code validation each time a user logs in or use the additional code validation to check after a set number of days. For example, admin could ask their users to verify their identity using the email code once a week. The rest of the time they would login normally.

To enable this feature, navigate to Administration -> Settings -> System Settings -> User Logon Settings -> ‘Login Strategy’ dropdown field and select ‘2-Factor Authentication Login’.

Navigate to Administration -> Settings -> System Settings -> Two Factor Settings.

• ‘Max Attempts’ decides how many times user can incorrectly enter verification code before their account is locked.
  
  
• ‘Remember Second Factor For (days)’ specifies the number of days before the user is asked to provide second factor code again. The user will not have to enter second factor code between logins for this number of days. Only their login and password will be required.
  
  

  Note

  If admin change this value the new settings will only take effect when the original period expires. For example, if this was set to 30 days then users will be asked to enter a second factor code once and then 30 days later and so on. If admin then change this value to 5 days, any user who has already entered a code will not be asked again for 30 days. The new 5 days period will take effect when they are next asked to enter a code.

  
  
  
• ‘Second Factor Code Length’ specifies the number of digits in the second factor code sent to a user.
  
  

Configuring a 2-Factor Authenticator App

For information on how to set up an authenticator app to produce verification codes, please refer to the section 'Configure 2-Factor Authenticator App' of the article Personal Preference Management - My Profile.

SAML/ADFS

What is SAML

SAML is an authentication method that allows you to integrate your Single Sign-On solution with different Service Providers, for example iPassport. This then let’s you control who can and cannot log into your iPassport instance. In addition to this, your users only have to remember one password.

Using SAML allows you to easily restrict access to the linked service when a member of staff leaves, as your IT will only have to disable their SAML account to stop the user from logging into iPassport.

Identity Provider SAML Configuration Metadata

If you want to start using SAML as your authentication method in iPassport, you’ll have to first configure your SSO solution to allow iPassport to authenticate users. Each iPassport customer has their own unique configuration and the easiest way to configure your Identity Provider is to upload the XML metadata file. The metadata can be found by entering the following URL in your browser:

For example, if your account domain is tgh, then the link you’ll enter is:

Once your IT department configures the Identity Provider (IdP) you’ll be able to configure the iPassport side.

Configure iPassport to use SAML

Navigate to Administration > Settings > System Settings > SAML Configuration

In here you can see 3 fields. All of them are required to configure SAML as an authentication method.

• The field SAML Server Address is either the IP address or the URL to your IdP server
• The field SAML Certificate is the certificate used to verify the SAML request and response
• The field Authentication User Key tells iPassport which attribute to use when identifying the user

There are 3 options to select when choosing Authentication User Key

• urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent
• urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:attrname-format:unspecified
  
• urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress

When persistent or unspecified field is selected this will tell iPassport to find the user with the matching Unique User Identifier within their user profile.

When emailAddress is select then user will be identified by their email address registered in iPassport.

Usually, the email address is used as the user identifier since each user already has their own unique address.

SAML Certificate

The certificate is required to verify requests and responses from IdP. Your IT should be able to provide the valid certificate. It will be created as one of the steps when setting up your IdP to allow iPassport to authenticate users.

The certificate has to be in the X.509 format. An example is shown below:

Once you have configured and saved the SAML Settings navigate to Administration > Settings > User Logon Settings.

Here, from the Login Strategy dropdown select the SAML/ADFS option and click the “Save” button.

If the changes are saved correctly you can now test the login.

If the changes were not saved it means some of the requirement to enable SAML were not met. Check the error message at the top of the page for details.

As an example, these are the sources of information in a Microsoft Azure™️ platform: