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Direct Authentication (Hogg, Smith, Chong, Hollander, Kozaczynski, Brader, Delgado, Taylor, Wall, Slater, Imran, Cibraro, Cunningham)

How can a service verify the credentials provided by a consumer?

Problem

Some of the capabilities offered by a service may be intended for specific groups of consumers or may involve the transmission of sensitive data. Attackers that access this data could use it to compromise the service or the IT enterprise itself.

Solution

Service capabilities require that consumers provide credentials that can be authenticated against an identity store.

Application

The service implementation is provided access to an identity store, allowing it to authenticate the consumer directly.

Impacts

Consumers must provide credentials compatible with the service’s authentication logic. This pattern may lead to multiple identity stores, resulting in extra governance burden.