PingFederate Server

Enabling RADIUS authentication

The RADIUS protocol provides a common approach for implementing strong authentication in a client-server configuration.

About this task

The RADIUS authentication setup is available through configuration files in the <pf_install>/pingfederate/bin directory. The administrative API supports the protocol scenario for one-step authentication, for example, appending a one time password (OTP) after the password.

When RADIUS authentication is protecting the administrative API, the API calls must be authenticated by valid credentials over HTTP Basic authentication. Otherwise, the administrative API returns an error message. The roles assigned to the accounts affect the results of the API calls.

When you configure RADIUS authentication, PingFederate does not lock out accounts based upon the number of failed logon attempts. Instead, responsibility for preventing access is delegated to the RADIUS server and enforced according to its password lockout settings.

The NAS-IP-Address attribute is added to all Access-Request packets sent to the RADIUS server. The value is copied from the pf.engine.bind.address property in run.properties. Only IPv4 addresses are supported.

Steps

  1. In the <pf_install>/pingfederate/bin/run.properties file, set the value of the pf.admin.api.authentication property to RADIUS.

    You can configure PingFederate to support both RADIUS authentication and OAuth 2.0 authorization by specifying two values separated with a comma. For example, specify pf.admin.api.authentication=OAuth2,RADIUS. Supporting two authentication methods is helpful when you want to change applications from one method to another. For more information about supporting two authentication methods, see the description of pf.admin.api.authentication in Configuring PingFederate properties.

  2. In the <pf_install>/pingfederate/bin/radius.properties file, change property values as needed for your network configuration. For instructions and additional information, see the comments in the file.

    Assign RADIUS users or designated RADIUS groups, or both, to at least one of the PingFederate administrative roles as indicated in the properties file. Alternatively, you can set the use.ldap.roles property to true and use the LDAP properties file, which is also in the bin directory, to map LDAP group-based permissions to PingFederate roles. For more information about permissions attached to the PingFederate roles, see the PingFederate User Access Control table in Configure access to the administrative API.

    When assigning roles, remember that all accounts specified in radius.properties can access the administrative API and the administrative console.

  3. Restart PingFederate.

    In a clustered PingFederate environment, you only need to modify run.properties and radius.properties on the console node.