Windows® 2000 Active Directory™

Types of Security

Windows 2000 and Active Directory have three primary security mechanisms.

• Kerberos

• Public key infrastructure (PKI)

• IP Security (IPSec)

All three of these overlap in some ways and are distinctly different in other ways. They are used for different purposes in an Active Directory deployment. To design a security strategy that takes best advantage of the different security offerings in Windows 2000, it is important to understand the differences of the three primary security mechanisms.

Kerberos

Kerberos is the default authentication protocol utilized by Active Directory and Windows 2000. The version of Kerberos used by Windows 2000 is based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Kerberos version 5 and has been ...