SecSign ID Plugin: Windows Credential Provider

This article gives an overview of securing your Windows Login with two-factor authentication. For a detailed tutorial on how to integrate two-factor authentication with your Windows Login, have a look at the plugin tutorial.

With the SecSign ID Two-Factor Authentication the user can log in to his Windows Desktop in just one convenient and quick step – without inconvenient and complex codes.
To login the user simply needs to provide user credentials like he is used to, and select the displayed symbol in his mobile app – that’s it. Next level security with minimal complexity.

If required you can choose mobile or Email OTP (one-time passwords) as alternative authentication option.

You have several options to enroll your users for 2FA with SecSign. Most commonly, the 2FA ID should be identical to the Windows user name (for example sAMAccountName or userPrincipalName), and only successfully authenticated (user name and password) users should be able to create a 2FA account.
With SecSign enrollment of your users is quick and convenient for both the user and the administrator.

To enroll your users for 2FA based off your Active Directory you have two options: With Schema Extension to add a 2FA attribute to the user in the Active Directory, or without Schema Extension and read-only access from the SecSign ID Server.

For both options the enrollment procedure can either proceed via the Custom ID App or a custom landing page for the users to enroll.

The Tutorial on how to enroll your Active Directory users is available here

The SecSign ID credential provider plugin adds an SecSign ID log-in after the interactive Windows log-on with user name and password. This affects direct log-ins at the PC as well as Remote Desktop connections.

Windows Login: Prerequisites

The SecSign ID Credential Provider looks up the SecSign ID user name of a Windows user in the Active Directory of the Windows domain. Therefore:

• The PC on which the credential provider is install must be member of a Windows domain and
• The SecSign ID Login following the password login is active for those users that have a SecSign ID user name added to their user attribute as well as for those users that are members of a pre-configured 2FA user group in the Windows Active Directory.
  All other users will only need the login with a Windows password and no 2FA. Section 1 describes the required Active Directory setup.

Windows Login: Installation

Run SecSignCredProv-Setup.exe.

The installer will automatically download and install Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2015 runtime components as well as the .NET 4 runtime if not installed yet.

The SecSign ID Credential provider uses the following registry keys which you will find at HKLM\SOFTWARE\SecSign\CredentialProvider.
Please edit them to match your environment.

– ServiceNameForSecSignApp: The name of your service for which the login will be secured by the SecSign ID. The SecSignApp will display this text during the log-in.

– ServiceAddressForSecSignApp: The address of your service for which the login will be secured by the SecSign ID. The SecSignApp will display this text during the log-in. Typically this is a URL.

– SecSignIDServerHostName: The host name of the SecSign ID Server.

– SecSignIDServerPort: The port at the SecSign ID Server for requests from mobile devices.

– UserGroupWithSecSignIDLogin: Name of the user group in the Active Directory that contains the users who will need to perform a 2FA after their password login. The SecSign ID user name is sAMAccountName of the Windows user.
We recommend using a customized SecSign ID app in this scenario to ensure that a SecSign ID with this specific name can only be created, if the user knows the corresponding Windows Password.
Users in subgroups are considered members of the group.

– FallbackSecSignIDServerHostName: The host name of the optional fallback SecSign ID Server if you have one.

– FallbackSecSignIDServerPort: The port at the optional fallback SecSign ID Server for requests from mobile devices.

Windows Login: Login

With the SecSign ID Credential Provider installed, the Windows log-in consists of:

1. Windows username and password entry.
2. SecSign ID approval on the mobile device.

The Login with the SecSign ID may be performed by selecting the corresponding access pass in the SecSign App or with an one-time password that is displayed either in an authenticator app or the display of a hardware ID Token.

Login with Access Pass

Login with OTP (one-time password)

The SecSign ID Credential Provider is not active if Windows is booted into Safe Mode. That means it has to made sure that users cannot reboot Windows into Safe Mode.

For more information about the individual Windows Plugins select your user case below.