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I am trying to understand concepts of windows authentication, forms authentication and their differences. I am confused. Can someone help me in clarifying this.
Thanks.
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Introduction. ASP.NET provides two main ways to secure your web applications. They are - Windows authentication and Forms authentication. Windows authentication uses windows users names and passwords to authenticate them where as Forms authentication typically uses user ids and passwords stored in some database.
Windows – as discussed in the preceding tutorial, when an application uses Windows authentication it is the web server's responsibility to authenticate the visitor, and this is usually done through Basic, Digest, or Integrated Windows authentication. Forms– users are authenticated via a form on a web page.
Form-based authentication allows the developer to control the look and feel of the login authentication screens by customizing the login screen and error pages that an HTTP browser presents to the end user.
To verify/change that settings go to IE > Tools > Internet Options > Security TAB > Custom Level > Scroll it to the end and look for User Authentication options.
Windows Authentication provider is the default authentication provider for ASP.NET applications. When a user using this authentication logs in to an application, the credentials are matched with the Windows domain through IIS.
There are 4 types of Windows Authentication methods:
1) Anonymous Authentication - IIS allows any user
2) Basic Authentication - A windows username and password has to be sent across the network (in plain text format, hence not very secure).
3) Digest Authentication - Same as Basic Authentication, but the credentials are encrypted. Works only on IE 5 or above
4) Integrated Windows Authentication - Relies on Kerberos technology, with strong credential encryption
Forms Authentication - This authentication relies on code written by a developer, where credentials are matched against a database. Credentials are entered on web forms, and are matched with the database table that contains the user information.
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Windows Authentication refers to authenticating against Windows user accounts on the box that the application is running on.
Forms authentication is a stand alone method of authenticating in .NET forms that you can hook up to some other system, such as a database.
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