Authentication Agent (AA) is an authentication client, capable of cooperating with the PNS firewall and the Authentication Server (AS) to identify the users initiating network connections. The authentication process and the related communication between the components is summarized below. For details, see Chapter 15, Connection authentication and authorization in Proxedo Network Security Suite 1.0 Administrator Guide.

Authentication aims to determine the identity of the user. During the authentication process the user initiating the connection shares a secret (for example, a password) with the other party that verifies its authenticity.

Several procedures (so called authentication methods) exist for verifying the identity of the user:

Naturally, the above methods can be combined to implement strong two-factor authentication in sensitive environments.