SiteMinder vs .NET Membership Provider/Forms Authentication

[vcuankitdotnet]

Hi everyone,

We are currently under-going a new security service and the company is
leaning towards using SiteMinder. My question is: why not just use
the .NET membership and roles provider and create a custom provider
suitable to the business need? What else does SiteMinder do that
the .NET framework does not do to facilitate authentication and
authorization on .NET web applications? Most importantly, is there
anything that the .NET framework does which SiteMinder does not do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Jesse Houwing]

Hello vcuankitdotnet,

Hi everyone,

We are currently under-going a new security service and the company is
leaning towards using SiteMinder. My question is: why not just use
the .NET membership and roles provider and create a custom provider
suitable to the business need? What else does SiteMinder do that
the .NET framework does not do to facilitate authentication and
authorization on .NET web applications? Most importantly, is there
anything that the .NET framework does which SiteMinder does not do?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Even if they decide to use SiteMinder, why not write a provider that get's
the values from SiteMinder and make sure you can easily switch between versions,
other apps and futute business quircks.

My guess the only feature which doesn't exist in the Membership system by
default, which SiteMinder does allow for is SingleSignOn. It migth take somework,
but in the end I think that you can make SiteMinder and Membership work together
very tightly.

--
Jesse Houwing
jesse.houwing at sogeti.nl

[vcuankitdotnet]

I'm not an expert, but can't you configure IIS for single sign-on in
your web application? I'm just failing to see why anyone would pay
money to use SiteMinder as opposed to just spending a little bit of
time and developing a custom membership provider?