## Background Concepts

The following topics present a few background concepts that are useful for understanding the discussions of authentication in this topic:

· Principals, which are the subjects of authentication

· The shared-secret authentication protocol, which is the mechanism by which authentication is effected when applications specify this protocol via the authenticated RPC facility

· Cells, which are the environment in which authentication takes place

· Protection levels, which are the various degrees to which transmitted application-level data may be protected

· Data encryption/decryption (cryptographic) algorithms, which are the mechanisms that the security server and client and server runtimes use to encrypt and decrypt data exchanged between principals

More:

Principals

The Shared-Secret Authentication Protocol

Cells and Realms

Protection Levels

Data Encryption Mechanisms

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