- Janus is an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting framework for +

+ Janus is an effort to develop an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting framework for building security infrastructures. -

- The Janus sub-project defines the Janus security framework and provides default implementations: -

A XML file based implementation
A RDMS implementation (work in progress)
A LDAP implementation (to come)

+ Security is a broad and complex domain, which refers to ways of protecting sensitive + resources from unauthorized access. This is usually done with a combination of authentication + - to prove an individual's identity -, and authorization - to grant or deny an operation on a resource. + Most security measures also involves some form of cryptography: secure digests to preserve data integrity, + data encryption mechanisms to protect data + access from individuals without proper authorization and digital signatures to prove authenticity of some sort. +

- Authentication is about finding out if someone is who he/she claims to - be. This is done by presenting some proof of identity, which usually can - take the form of username/password, digital signature, etc. -

+ +

+ Janus is an attempt to provide a framework for developing complex security infrastructures. + It addresses the Authentication, Authorization and Accounting concerns of secure applications or systems. +

+ Janus tries to define proper abstractions for security concepts to be a generic and flexible security framework + on top of which complex secure applications can be built. It does not deal with cryptography mechanisms, + since cryptography is a mean of attaining security goals. Yet, since Janus has been thought to be flexible, + it is easy to plug-in your own implementations of Janus abstractions to use cryptography for instance. +

- -

- Authorization is about, once a user has been identified, determining if - hs/she is authorized to do something. A successful authorization results in the user - being granted the permission to perform an operation on a resource. -

- - +

+ The Janus sub-project defines the Janus security framework and provides default implementations of authentication, + authorization and accounting components. + + We believe Janus has some unique features that set it apart from existing solutions: +

Plain Java Object framework
Core has no dependency
IoC friendly (our favorite pattern)
Test-Driven developed
No coupling with some logging framework you don't want
Tested so you don't have to do it
Modular design - Use what you need, no more

- +

+ Janus is already stable enough to build simple application security. Here's what we're currently targetting: +

Username/password basic authentication (done)
Role based access control (done)
XML security realm for use with username/password authentication (done)
XML security policy for use with role-based access control (done)
Groups of principals (to come)
Role hierarchies (to come)
RDMS security realm (to come)
RDMS security policy (to come)
LDAP security realm (to come)
LDAP security policy (to come)
Dynamic separation of duties (planned)
Accounting (planned)

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- + +

+ Authentication is the process of validating an individual's identity. It's about finding out + if an individual is who he/she claims to be. + + This is done by presenting some proof of identity, which usually can take the form of username/password, + digital signature, etc. The idea is that each individual can be recognized by unique information that + differentiates him or her from other individuals. +

- -

+ +

+ Authorization is about, once a user has been authenticated, determining if + hs/she is authorized to do something. A successful authorization results in the user + being granted the permission to perform an operation on a resource. A failed authorization will + result in the denial of the same permission. +

+ + + +

Accounting is the concern of collecting resource access/consumption data for the purposes of auditing. -