FOSS4G 2023

The presentation will provide a comprehensive introduction to GeoServer's own authentication and authorization subsystems. The authentication part will cover the various supported authentication protocols (e.g. basic/digest authentication, CAS, OAuth2) and identity providers (such as local config files, database tables, and LDAP servers). It will also cover the recent improvements implemented with the OpenID integrations and the refreshed Keycloak integration.

It will explain how to combine various authentication mechanisms in a single comprehensive authentication tool, as well as provide examples of custom authentication plugins for GeoServer, integrating it in a home-grown security architecture. We’ll then move on to authorization, describing the GeoServer pluggable authorization mechanism, and comparing it with an external proxy-based solution. We will explain the default service and data security system, reviewing its benefits and limitations.

Finally, we’ll explore the advanced authorization provider, GeoFence. The different levels of integration with GeoServer will be presented, from the simple and seamless direct integration to the more sophisticated external setup. Finally, we’ll explore GeoFence’s powerful authorization rules using:

• The current user and its roles.
• The OGC services, workspace, layer, and layer group.
• CQL read and write filters.
• Attribute selection.
• Cropping raster and vector data to areas of interest.