Leadership By Numbers :: Domino 8 Does Support HTTP Password Quality, even with the iPhone

Category Administration IBM/Lotus Domino ND8 Linux
It was almost a deal-breaker. Our new ND8.0.2 server had to be configured to support tough passwords for HTTP clients. Reading over the documentation about the Security Policy settings gives no indication if "password quality" works for HTTP authentication. Even worse, the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Reviewer's Guide explains that password quality "applies to password on embedded Lotus Notes ID only."

In fact, the Security Policy settings for password quality works great for HTTP clients. I've configured our ND8 server so that (1) each HTTP account gets a simple, default password, (2) each HTTP account is set to require a new password when they authenticate, (3) a Security Policy has been configured for each HTTP account, and the password quality is set at our corporate standard.

The final test was whether or not everything would function for the iPhone. Because Apple uses a Safari browser, built on WebKit, I couldn't be sure that our iPhone accounts would be able to work with the ND8 interface for changing HTTP passwords. If it didn't work, then I was going to have to dig into the forms and redo them. Luckily, the iPhone passed all the tests, and everyone is very happy. After the user authenticates to the server by the Mail Redirector, they immediately are prompted to change their password, after which their iNotes Ultralite is displayed and they can read their e-mail.

Technorati Tags: IBM/Lotus Domino, iPhone, Security

Comments

4 - Ok, before IBM ever got a chance to call me back, I changed the Policy type to "Explicit" and added my Groups and all worked like a charm. I'm not 100% sure if I had something setup incorrectly with using the Organizational type or if it just doesn't work with it. Anyway, everything is working as advertised now Emoticon

Posted by Mike Feaster At 04:58:55 AM On 04/16/2009 | - Website - |

3 - Thanks for the response Jack. We are testing this in a very simple development environment. We only have the one policy document and the one security document. I'm sure I'm missing something stupid, this is actually the first time we've used Policy documents. I've set the Policy document to Organizational and have my Security Settings specified in the Policy. I've opened a ticket with IBM. Hopefully they will have a swift answer to why this isn't working, but I'm not holding my breath.

Thanks again,

Mike

Posted by Mike Feaster At 12:05:32 AM On 04/16/2009 | - Website - |

2 - Mike, it's working for me. I'm running ND8.5 on RHEL 5. Can you set up a test server to create a very simple setup ? Once you see it work, it should make it simpler to go backwards and find the breakpoint.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 05:29:13 AM On 04/15/2009 | - Website - |

1 - I've been working on this for a couple of weeks now. Using the policy and security documents I've got everything to work except for the Password Quality piece to work. We don't use any notes IDs except for the Dev & Admin folks. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mike

Posted by Mike Feaster At 04:53:08 AM On 04/15/2009 | - Website - |