Common authentication mechanism for LDAP and IMAP

Common authentication mechanism for LDAP and IMAP

Is there a common authentication mechanism for LDAP and IMAP?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

You are somewhat mixing apples and oranges. IMAP is the Internet Messaging Application Protocol and is used for e-mail. As opposed to POP3 (3rd version of the Post Office Protocol), IMAP leaves the e-mail on the server rather than downloading to a client.

LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. It is used to access directories, which in some cases are used for authentication.

There are IMAP implementations that use LDAP authentication. Among these is Courier-IMAP. And, I'm sure there are others.


For more information on this topic, visit these other searchSecurity resources:
Best Web Links: Authentication/Access Control


This was first published in January 2002