Chapter 2

About the tools

The seven IAM tools (plus a reverse proxy): what each is, its single most important job, and who it talks to.

Keep the categories straight — that is what the exam tests, and what a working IAM architecture depends on. For each tool, three questions matter: what is it, what is its most important job, and who does it talk to?

Source of truth IGA Directory Identity Provider App / Policy PAM SIEM Proxy

OpenLDAP

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Directory service · dc=golonex,dc=local

Main use case: the central store of identities and groups — the enterprise "phone book" every other tool reads.

First-hand purpose: hold accounts (ou=people) and access groups / entitlements (ou=groups) as the single, authoritative directory.

Talks to: written only by midPoint (provisioning); read by Keycloak (federation). Nothing else writes to it — that discipline keeps the directory trustworthy.

midPoint

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Identity Governance & Administration (IGA)

Main use case: the engine of the identity lifecycle — it decides who should have what and makes reality match.

First-hand purpose: read the authoritative HR feed and, from it, create / change / disable identities; provision entitlements through roles; run approvals, access reviews and reconciliation.

Talks to: reads the HR CSV (source), writes OpenLDAP (target). The brain; the directory is its memory.

Keycloak

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Access Management / Identity Provider (IdP)

Main use case: single sign-on — one login, with MFA, that every application trusts.

First-hand purpose: authenticate users and issue tokens. It federates the OpenLDAP directory, so the accounts midPoint provisions are exactly the accounts that can log in.

Talks to: reads OpenLDAP (user federation); issues OIDC tokens to the Portal; emits login events to the SIEM.

Golonex Portal + Open Policy Agent (OPA)

Golonex Portal reference →  ·  Open Policy Agent reference →

Business application (PEP) + Policy Decision Point (PDP)

Main use case: a real business app that enforces access on every action — where policy meets the user.

First-hand purpose: the Portal (Policy Enforcement Point) logs users in via Keycloak and, for every action, asks OPA (Policy Decision Point) "is this allowed?". OPA answers from policy-as-code: RBAC, ABAC (e.g. amount thresholds), and segregation of duties.

Talks to: Portal → Keycloak (login) and → OPA (authorize); both emit events to the SIEM.

Teleport

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Main use case: safe administrator access to servers — just-in-time, MFA-protected, and recorded.

First-hand purpose: give an IT admin a browser SSH session to a server without standing credentials, and record every keystroke for accountability.

Talks to: the admin's browser (through the proxy); the target server; recordings replay in its own UI.

Apache Guacamole

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Clientless session gateway

Main use case: browser-based privileged sessions (SSH/RDP/VNC) with no client installed — a complementary path to privileged systems.

First-hand purpose: broker and record a session to a target server entirely inside the browser, with playback.

Talks to: the admin's browser; the target server (via the guacd daemon); recordings stored on a volume.

Wazuh

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

SIEM — Security Information & Event Management

Main use case: the security operations centre's single pane of glass — collect events from everywhere and alert on the dangerous ones.

First-hand purpose: ingest authentication and authorization events and raise alerts — for example, a login attempt against a terminated account.

Talks to: receives forwarded Keycloak + Portal events; its indexer stores them; its dashboard shows them.

Caddy

Full reference — settings, source and what to look at →

Reverse proxy (supporting infrastructure)

Main use case: one secure front door for every console.

First-hand purpose: terminate HTTPS and route each subdomain to the right tool, so nothing else is exposed to the network.

Talks to: the internet (ports 80/443) inbound; every tool's web UI internally. The only component that publishes a host port.

2.1 How they interact — the big picture

Three enterprise categories sit on top of a directory foundation, with a policy engine at the application and a SIEM watching everything:

  • IGA (midPoint) governs the lifecycle and writes the directory (OpenLDAP).
  • Access Management (Keycloak) reads that directory and handles logging in — SSO and MFA.
  • The application (Portal) trusts Keycloak for identity and asks OPA for every authorization decision.
  • PAM (Teleport, Guacamole) governs privileged access to servers, separately and with recording.
  • SIEM (Wazuh) ingests events from across the stack and alerts.
  • Caddy fronts all of it over HTTPS.
The one idea to remember midPoint is the only writer of the directory, and Keycloak reads that same directory. Governance and authentication therefore never disagree — disable an identity in IGA and it can no longer log in, everywhere, at once. Chapter 3 shows this visually.