In this video, we'll briefly talk about LDAP and Kerberos, which can be used for authentication.
So the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP, can be used to set up a centralized
server used for authentication. LDAP is not just a protocol, it's also an authentication
server that is very much like Active Directory. By itself, LDAP is not very secure, but security
can be added using a Kerberos server. An easy-to-use solution on Linux to install LDAP and Kerberos
is FreeIPA. This is an open-source server that implements both of these services. And
that makes that you get something that is very much like Microsoft Active Directory,
which by itself is also compatible with LDAP and Kerberos. So if you do want centralized
authentication, but you don't want to bring in Active Directory, well, these are excellent
solutions. The next part will be to set up Linux Client to authenticate on these external
servers. To do so, SSSD, about which you've learned in the previous lesson, is commonly
used.