Applies to Product:

USM Appliance™

AlienVault OSSIM®

In AlienVault USM Appliance, user administration occurs through authentication and authorization, which includes the process of creating, modifying, or deleting user accounts; controlling access to the USM Appliance web interface; enforcing administrative policies; and monitoring user activity.

User Authentication

USM Appliance allows you the flexibility of verifying user authenticity by storing credentials locally in USM Appliance or with existing user credentials established with LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

See Set Up Password Policy for Local User Authentication for instructions to store user credentials locally, or Configure LDAP in USM Appliance for instructions to use LDAP for authenticating users.

User Authorization and RBAC

Role-based access control (RBAC) delegates certain functions to specific roles and can be instrumental in enforcing administrative policies. The role, a given set of responsibilities, determines which USM Appliance features users can access. You may want to restrict access to certain parts of the web interface to ensure that unauthorized changes aren't made to USM Appliance. For example, you can restrict access solely to the part of the UI for delegating and reporting tickets, while allowing broader access to more critical parts of the UI for defining polices and correlation directives.

Important: You must configure user permissions in USM Appliance, even if authentication is performed against LDAP.

See User Authorization for more details.

User Activity

In addition to authenticating and authorizing users, USM Appliance captures the length of user sessions, as well as their activities. You can use these data for system audits and compliance.

See Monitor User Activities to make logging selections for monitoring user activity.

User Accounts

When you create user accounts, you determine what role the user is going to play in viewing and administering USM Appliance. You configure which parts of the web interface the users have access to and their level of visibility into the company's assets, including USM Appliance Sensors.

See Manage User Accounts for topics and instructions for creating and managing user accounts.