Cisco® Secure Internet Security Solutions

Overview of Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA)

You might be familiar with the term AAA (pronounced “triple a”). This is a security framework that stands for authentication, authorization, and accounting.

Basically, authentication is the actual permission to use the network, authorization is what you can do on the network, and accounting is what you did and how you did it. You have to be authenticated to be authorized or accounted.

Authentication

Authentication is the process of identification by the user to the ACS server. This can be carried out by a number of methods; the most frequently used is a username and password. The ACS server provides a means of authentication against various data sources, such as an Open DataBase ...