Configuring Alternative Authentication Providers

Abstract

One of Spring Security’s strongest points is that you can plug different authentication mechanisms into the framework. Spring Security was built to create, as much as possible, a pluggable architecture model, where different things can be plugged into the framework in an easy and unobtrusive way. In the authentication layer, this means that an abstraction exists that takes care of this part of the security process. This abstraction comes in the form, mainly, of the AuthenticationProvider interface, but it is also supported by specific security servlet filters and user details services.