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What is AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting)?

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Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) is an architectural framework to gain access to computer resources, enforcing policies, auditing usage, to provide essential information required for billing of services and other processes essential for network management and security. This process is mainly used so that network and software application resources are accessible to some specific and legitimate users. The AAA concept is widely used in reference to the network protocol RADIUS.

The first step: Authentication
Authentication is the method of identifying the user. With the help of the user’s authentication credentials, it checks if the user is legitimate or not or if the user has access to the network, by checking if the user’s credentials match with credentials stored in the network database. After the authentication is approved the user gains access to the internal resources of the network.

Authorization
For the user to perform certain tasks or to issue commands to the network, he must gain authorization. It determines the extent of access to the network and what type of services and resources are accessible by the authenticated user. Authorization is the method of enforcing policies.

Accounting
In this stage, the usage of system resources by the user is measured: Login time, Data Sent, Data Received, and Logout Time. Accounting Process is carried out by logging out the session statistics and usage information and is used for authorization control, billing, resource utilization.

The Pros

  1. AAA framework increases the scalability of a network: Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system.
  2. It causes increased flexibility and better control of the network.
  3. It helps maintain standard protocols in the network.
  4. RADIUS allows for unique credentials for each user.
  5. IT Admins will have a central point for the user and system authentication.

The Cons

  1. On RADIUS Servers, Configuration and Initial setup can be complicated and time-consuming.
  2. It is a very hard choice to determine which is the best RADIUS server software and implementation model for your organization.
  3. Maintenance can be difficult and time-consuming for on-prem hardware.

References:

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(computer_security)

Last Updated : 11 May, 2020
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