Authentication Services Overview

Article
06/30/2006

The Authentication Services feature for Microsoft® Windows® CE .NET provides security services for user authentication, credential management, and message protection through the Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI). Within SSPI, different security options are available. These options include NTLM security support provider (SSP) and Kerberos SSP. Each of these options contains different authentication and cryptographic schemes. You can also provide your own security package and add it to the registry for applications to use.

In addition to the SSPI credential management functionality, a feature called Credential Manager is included automatically with Kerberos and NTLM services. Credential Manager allows users an option to save a name, password, and other authentication information on the device. The Credential Manager keeps track of the information and updates it when necessary.

Passport Authentication is a centralized service provided by Microsoft that offers a single logon and core profile services to member sites. This feature is automatically included with WinInet and is fully implemented. This frees application developers from dealing with the details of interacting with the Passport infrastructure.

Feature Summary

The following table shows operating system design information for Authentication Services.

Element	Information
Dependencies for Schannel	Requires CryptoAPI 2.0 for certificate management. Schannel is exposed through Winsock and Wininet and not through SSPI.
Dependencies for Passport Authentication	Included automatically with WinInet.

Modules and Components

The following table shows the components and modules that implement Authentication Services.

Item	Module	Component
Authentication Services	secur32	None
Kerberos Security Support Service Provider	kerberos, cryptdll	None
NTLM Security Support Service Provider	ntlmssp	None
Passport Authentication	wininet	None
Schannel Security Support Service Provider	schannel	None