Understanding Kerberos

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that runs on Windows Server, which enables clients to authenticate on the network and access services within the Windows domain. Kerberos provides single sign-on (SSO), which allows a user to authenticate once on a network and access resources without having to re-enter their user credentials each time they need to access a new resource, such as a mapped network drive. Kerberos supports delegated authentication, which allows a service running on a client’s computer to act on behalf of the authenticated domain user when it connects to other services on the network. Kerberos supports interoperability, which allows a Windows-based operating system to work in other networks that also use Kerberos as their authentication mechanism. When using Kerberos on a network, it supports mutual authentication, which allows two devices to validate the identity of each other.

Within an Active Directory environment, there...