Web Access Management

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What Does Web Access Management Mean?

Web access management (WAM) is a process for identity authentication for Web access. It is a form of access and identity management which controls access to Web resources like Web servers and secure servers by providing authentication management through policy-based authorizations as well as audit and report services. It is often used in Web-based applications to regulate external user access through the use of username and password key pairs.

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Techopedia Explains Web Access Management

Web access management normally determines a user’s identity by asking for a username and a password, a combination unique to each user. Other access methods may utilize access tokens as a one-time password generation facility or digital certificates.

A user or a process may request access to a Web resource, and once identity has been confirmed, policy-based authorization is applied to the identified user. The system looks up the user authorization level and compares it to the policy of the requested resource and then grants or denies access depending on the authorization of the user and the policy of the resource. Policies are simply rules on who is able to access a certain resource; for example, only administrators, certain users, or the general user base.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.