Understanding the System.Web. Security Namespace

When you think about the System.Web.Security namespace, think about unique Web programming requirements. Don’t get the idea that System.Web.Security is an independent namespace that you can use by itself for all of your Web needs—it’s in addition to the existing classes. For example, if you want to verify a user identity, you’ll still likely need to use the members of the System.Security.Principal namespace.

Tip

You can find a complete description of the System.Web.Security namespace at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemWebSecurity.asp. Make sure you watch for new security additions for the Internet. It’s also important to watch for changes as Microsoft updates products such as Passport.

This namespace is the only one where you can find Passport support, which means that you could conceivably use it even with desktop applications. The System.Web.Security namespace includes several Passport-specific classes including PassportAuthenticationEventArgs, PassportAuthenticationModule, and PassportIdentity. You may still need the Passport SDK to meet all of your Passport development needs. See the Microsoft Web site at http://www.passport.net/ for further details. The article entitled, “About the Passport SDK” (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=89B1BA8B-4AA2-4F1B-B51C-DE4B13581608) provides specifics you need to know. (Also see Chapter 11 for details on what you can do with Passport support in .NET.)

Because security issues in Web development is a complex topic, you’ll need additional information before seeing an actual example of this namespace in use. The “Using the System.Web.Security Namespace” section of Chapter 9 contains one of the preliminary examples of this namespace in use.