User Authentication Strategies in Multi-Institutional Environments

Common Practice for Remote Resource Authentication

• Put up an authenticated web page with passwords for your database vendors.
• Use a proxy server of some sort to pass users through to the database vendor.
• Use network-level transport tunnel: Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) / Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP) / Layer-2 Tunnelling Protocol (L2TP)
• Use another form of authentication with the vendor other than IP address:
  • Referrer URL
  • Vendor-provided script