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Authentication

To enable Imply Hybrid (formerly Imply Cloud) Auth for your organization, contact your Imply account representative.

Imply Hybrid Auth provides secure authentication to Imply Hybrid through its built-in authentication service. You can enable one or more of the available built-in password policies or set up a new policy for your FreeOTP or Google Authenticator One-Time Password generator to validate one-time passwords.

This article describes how to use Imply Hybrid Auth to facilitate secure authentication to Imply.

Password policies​

By default, new organizations do not have password policies associated with them. You can enable and customize password policies for users as required by the security policies of your organization.

To enable a password policy for your organization, follow these steps:

  1. In the User management console, select Authentication.
  2. Click the Password Policy tab.
  3. Click Add policy to expand the list and select a policy type. For example, you can configure a policy with the following requirements:
    • Must be at least eight characters in length
    • Must have at least one uppercase character
    • Must have at least one lowercase character
    • Must have at least one special character
    • Cannot be a username
    • Cannot be an email
  4. When finished, click Save.

The following screen capture shows an example password policy:

Password policy config

This applies the settings throughout the organization. To configure policy settings at the user level, select the user first and then make the changes.

Password reset​

To allow users to reset forgotten passwords, select Organization Settings from the left menu of the User management console. On the Login tab, toggle the Forgot password switch. This shows a link on the login page for users to click on if they have forgotten their credentials.

Multi-factor authentication with one-time passwords​

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) can significantly enhance user access security. Imply Hybrid Auth works with Google Authenticator and FreeOTP authenticator applications.

Imply Hybrid Auth has a number of policies you can set up for your FreeOTP or Google Authenticator One-Time Password (OTP) generator. There are two different algorithms to choose from: Time Based (TOTP) and Counter Based (HOTP). Each algorithm comes with a set of configuration options.

To enable MFA with an OTP policy, follow these steps:

  1. In the User management console, select Authentication.
  2. Go to the OTP Policy tab.
  3. For the OTP Type, choose counter-based tokens or time-limited tokens.
  4. Configure other settings based on your requirements, including the OTP hash algorithm, length of the token, and the look-ahead window, which sets a leniency period in case of a synchronization discrepancy between the token generator and server.
    The configuration options are as follows:
    • OTP: Require, disable, or optionally show an OTP if a user has configured that setting in their account.
    • OTP Type: The type of the OTP.
    • OTP Hash Algorithm: The hashing algorithm used to generate the OTP.
    • Number of Digits: The number of digits in the OTP.
    • Look Ahead Window: The number of intervals or characters the server should look ahead.
    • OTP Token Period (TOTP only): The number of seconds an OTP token should be valid for.
    • Initial Counter (HOTP only): The value of the initial counter.
    • Supported Applications: Applications that support the current OTP policy.
  5. Click Save to apply the configuration.

The following screen capture shows an example OTP policy:

OTP policy config