About User Identity Sources

The following table provides a brief overview of the user identity sources supported by the system. Each identity source provides a store of users for user awareness. These users can then be controlled with identity and access control policies.

User Identity Source

Policy

Server Requirements

Type

Authentication Type

User Awareness?

User Control?

For more information, see...

ISE/ISE-PIC

Identity

Microsoft Active Directory

Authoritative logins

Passive

Yes

Yes

The ISE/ISE-PIC Identity Source

TS Agent

Identity

Microsoft Windows Terminal Server

Authoritative logins

Passive

Yes

Yes

The Terminal Services (TS) Agent Identity Source

Captive portal

Identity

Microsoft Active Directory

Authoritative logins

Active

Yes

Yes

The Captive Portal Identity Source

Remote Access VPNIdentity OpenLDAP or Microsoft Active Directory

Authoritative logins

Active

Yes

Yes

The Remote Access VPN Identity Source

Identity

RADIUS

Authoritative logins

Active

Yes

No

Traffic-based detection

Network discovery

n/a

Non-authoritative logins

n/a

Yes

No

The Traffic-Based Detection Identity Source

Consider the following when selecting identity sources to deploy:

  • You must use traffic-based detection for non-LDAP user logins.

  • You must use traffic-based detection or captive portal to record failed login or authentication activity. A failed login or authentication attempt does not add a new user to the list of users in the database.

  • The captive portal identity source requires a managed device with a routed interface. You cannot use an inline (also referred to as tap mode) interface with captive portal.

Data from those identity sources is stored in the Cisco Defense Orchestrator's users database and the user activity database. You can configure Cisco Defense Orchestrator-server user downloads to automatically and regularly download new user data to your databases.

After you configure identity rules using the desired identity source, you must associate each rule with an access control policy and deploy the policy to managed devices for the policy to have any effect. For more information about access control policies and deployment, see Associating Other Policies with Access Control.

For general information about user identity, see About User Identity.