Web Access Management (WAM)

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.