Presenting at EDMUG last week was a blast. The audience was great and people asked some fantastic questions. I presented Enterprise Architecture for Mere Mortals: Authentication where I discussed the major authentication mechanisms for enterprise applications – basic, NTLM, and Kerberos – and authentication topologies – trusted subsystem, delegation, constrained delegation, and protocol transition. It felt very strange doing a development presentation and never launching Visual Studio. I believe the audience got the point that, although not straightforward, constrained delegation isn’t that hard to configure and you don’t have to resort to basic authentication when you need to do a multi-server hop. (e.g. Sending credentials from the client to IIS to SQL Server.) Here is the slidedeck. (N.B. You’ll need PowerPoint 2007 to open it. Email me if you would like a version for 2003.)

I had Tools of the Trade: Must-Have .NET Utilities in my back pocket in case I ran out of things to talk about regarding security. As it turns out, lack of material wasn’t a problem. I always seem to arrive over-prepared. :^) If EDMUG wants to invite me back, I’ve got a presentation waiting. Or maybe I’ll present it at the Edmonton Code Camp…

Thanks again to EDMUG for inviting me to speak!