How to setup Lawson Portal so a SecurId (dynamic) password can be used?

check out Article ID: 129099 in the knowledge web on support.lawson.com
Follow the steps outlined below to resolve this issue.
Make sure the web server realm for the document root, cgi-lawson, and servlet location are set to the same value.
Set the Lawson web server document root, cgi-lawson, and servlet location Access Control List (ACL) to deny access for Everyone and allow access for the Lawson group. (In order to prevent double/multiple authentication across locations, the realm for each must be set to the same value.)

what are you using for a webserver?

We're using Tomcat Apache on a Unix server. Thanks.

Did you have Portal set up and working before you implemented SecurID? (i.e. was it double-prompting before)?

In httpd.conf, make sure the AuthName for /cgi-lawson and /servlet are the same...

Yes it worked before using static passwords. Thanks.

What type of Apache module are you using to perform the SecurId authentication? It's my impression (and bear in mind that I have no direct experience with this), that repeated authentication is handled by checking a cookie that is valid for a (configurable) length of time.

You obviously can't simply use the standard HTTP basic authentication, because the "Authorization: BASIC" HTTP header will almost always have an outdated base64-encoded password. But the XMLHTTP APIs used by /lawsom/portal/common.js depend on basic authentication. Servlets should be OK, beause they depend on the request webuser, which is kept by Apache.

Hello, Danny!

The question has several part:

1. You need to make sure your components support dynamic authentication. One main example of the software that does NOT support it is Tomcat 3.x. I will not go into the details why. Tomcat 4.1 with Apache 2.0 and java 1.4.2 does support this. Other combinations MAY support this (in fact, pretty much any web server PROBABLY WILL support it; Tomcat 4.0 MAY support it with "transparent" authentication).

2. You need to make sure connector between web server and servlet container supports dynamic authentication. That question is much more difficult. You must make sure you compile mod_jk from scratch (C-source code) if you use apache and tomcat. On Windows situation is more complicated, but I think it will still work even with connector from Tomcat 3.3.1 - though I have not tried it.

3. You need to make sure the actual password typed at first is not resubmitted to the authenticator (as it will be different). This depends on the connector between a web server and a SecurID server (unless it modifies users directly in Active Directory, LDAP - or whatever else you use for authentication).

4. If everything fails, you still have an option for external authentication. I really used external authentication (via mod_auth_external) only on UNIX so far. That way you can "fake" implementation of your own password.

5. The other question you need to decide - whether the actual password known to Lawson will really be the one from SecurID. With external authentication that does not have to be the case

The question may end up being the one of a "session timeout" - when do you decide that the "original" session is gone. This is MUCH more difficult question that I'd rather not discuss unless I have to :-)

If you describe your setup including:
1) version of Env, IOS
2) System setup for LRS and LRE compoenents (OS version, software used)
3) SecurID mechanism currently implemented

I may be able to help.

Alex,

Thank you for your detailed comments. I'll pass this on to our web administrator and post an update when it becomes available.