An Introduction to LDAP

LDAP or Lightweight  Directory Access Protocol is a powerful yet easy to use authentication framework. It is use to authenticate users for many different types of applications around the world. Jenkins, Kubernetes, Jira are all using LDAP for authentication.

If you have un–secure apps then this course is for you. When combined with the best of integrations and modern tooling, LDAP will enable you to setup automated authentication at higher velocity while maintaining cost effectiveness. We will learn about the four key components of LDAP –

1) Authentication – Learn how to setup a slapd server locally which will serve as the backend for LDAP. We will then learn how to authenticate users using LDIF statements from the command line. Design your very own directory information tree.

2) Application Integration – Integrate LDAP with your python/java/nodejs apps. So your users have privacy and can be secure of what they do in your apps. This will also let you control access to different users.

3) Cloud Integration – LDAP is even used in the cloud. Here we see how to integrate LDAP with JumpCloud and other cloud platforms to manage your users without needing a local server.

As you grow to become a force in the Security/Dev team, you will adopt, in addition to LDAP, supporting technologies that compliment LDAP , such as SlapD(for a local server ), JumpCloud (for cloud support) and KeyCloak (for a UI and integration with other authentication mechanisms ) All in this course! We will also make use of LDAP in Jenkins and docker for advanced authentication. All of these topics will be talked about, so you know what they are used for.