CHOOSING AN IDENTITY PROVIDER FOR YOUR APPLICATION

A common requirement of software vendors with device based licensing scenarios, is to either replace them with or extend them with user based licensing scenarios.

This transition requires the implementation/integration of authentication functionality that is typically provided by identity providers.

AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORIZATION

In such user based scenarios:

• Authentication (login, password management etc.) is handled by an identity provider, custom or commercial. SLASCONE is not an identity provider.
• Authorization (as described here) is handled by SLASCONE.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU DO NOT HAVE AN IDENTITY PROVIDER

We strongly discourage the implementation of custom identity providers, since these are complex components, that take considerable time and effort to implement and maintain, especially considering the legal, data privacy and compliance aspects.

There are many commercial identity providers to choose from such as Auth0, Azure Active Directory (B2C), Okta, Keycloak.

AZURE AD B2C vs THE REST

SLASCONE can work next to any identity provider. However, if you do not have any identity provider yet, then we strongly recommend the usage of Azure AD B2C, especially if you address B2C scenarios, which require license self-management.

The reason for this is that SLASCONE already uses Azure AD B2C as it's internal identity provider. Thus, using this for your application is going to make sure you have ONE user store for all purposes:

• Application authentication
• Access to the customer portal

In addition to that, Azure AD B2C incurs almost no additional monetary cost since it is included in the SLASCONE package.

THE REST

You can still use other identity providers such as Auth0, Keycloak or Okta. In such cases, federation with Azure AD B2C might be required for SSO access to the customer portal.