Configuring SAML authentication

You can integrate Data Quality & Observability Classic with an existing SAML solution and have your application act as a service provider. Once you set up the environment variables, you can access and configure SAML security settings as an administrator in the SAML Setup section of the Admin Console.

In this topic

1 Set the SAML authentication properties

Before configuring SAML authentication, you must add the following required properties to your configuration.

  • Standalone
  • Cloud Native
  1. Add the properties as environment variables to your owl-env.sh file.
  2. Prefix all properties with the export statement.
  3. Restart the DQ Web app.
  1. Add the properties as environment variables to your DQ-web ConfigMap.
  2. Recycle the pod.

Required properties

Property Description
SAML_ENABLED

Whether Collibra DQ uses SAML.

If set to false, users sign in with a username and password.

If set to true, SAML handles the authentication request.
SAML_ENTITY_ID

The name of the application for the identity provider, for example Collibra DQ.

It is an immutable unique identifier of the service provider for the Identity Provider (IdP).
SAML_ENTITY_BASEURL

The base URL that is provided in the service provider metadata. It must include a port number if one is configured on the IdP side.

Note Set this property when you use DNS.

Warning  If you have SAML configured in Collibra DQ, or if the app sits behind a load balancer, see the CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS property below.

Optional properties: general

You can further configure your SAML setup with the following optional properties.

Property Description
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=${IDP-BASE-URL},${DQ-BASE-URL} Allows cross-origin requests between Collibra DQ and SAML.

Replace ${IDP-BASE-URL} with the value of the actual IdP URL. For example, https://ping.auth.com/.

Replace ${DQ-BASE-URL} with the value of the actual DQ Base URL. For example, https://dq-env.com.
SAML_LB_EXISTS

Whether the application needs to configure a load balancer.

You generally need this setting only when the Load Balancer is set for SSL Termination.

The default value is false.

If set to true, you must also provide a value for SAML_LB_SERVER_NAME.
SAML_METADATA_USE_URL

Whether Collibra DQ uses a URL or a file for the identity provider metadata.

The default value is true.

If set to false, the file must be accessible to the owl-web and the path provided in the Meta-Data URL field of the Meta Data Configurations section under Admin Console > SAML Setup > Connection.
SAML_ROLES_PROP_NAME

The attribute in which the identity provider stores the role of the user authenticating in the SAML response.

The default value is memberOf.
SAML_GRANT_ALL_PUBLIC

Whether any user authenticated by the identity provider is allowed to login the Collibra DQ application.

The default value is true.
SAML_USER_NAME_PROP The name of the attribute in the SAML response that contains the username of the user who is authenticating.
SAML_TENANT_PROP_NAME

If using multi-tenant mode, the variable in which the identity provider stores the tenant name of the user authenticating in the SAML response.

The app will attempt to use the RelayState parameter to identify the tenant and then fall back on this property.
SAML_TENANT_PROP_FROM_URL

If using multi-tenant mode, this property controls where the tenant is set to use for authentication.

The default value is false.

If set to true, the app attempts to use the RelayState property to identify the tenant. If it is set to false, the app attempts to find the tenant in a SAML response attribute, which is defined by the SAML_TENANT_PROP_NAME property (default=tenant).
SAML_KEYSTORE_FILE

The path to the keystore for SSL validation.

The store should contain the keypair of the identity provider for SSL verification.
SAML_KEYSTORE_PASS The password for the keystore provided in SAML_KEYSTORE_FILE.
SAML_KEYSTORE_ALIAS The alias of the keypair (private and public) in the keystore used for SSL verification.
LOCAL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED

Allows you to display or hide the registration link for local users on the Collibra DQ sign-in page. Because the registration link is displayed on the sign-in page by default, this property is set to true.

To display or hide the registration link from the owl-env.sh file, select from the following properties:

Property Description
export LOCAL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED=true Displays the registration link on the sign-in page for local users. This is set to true by default.
export LOCAL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED=false Hides the registration link on the sign-in page for local users.

To display or hide the registration link from a K8s ConfigMap, select the from the following properties:

Property Description
LOCAL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED:"true" Displays the registration link on the sign-in page for local users. This is set to true by default.
LOCAL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED:"false" Hides the registration link on the sign-in page for local users.

Note This property must be set globally on deployment.
SAML_MAX_AUTH_AGE

The number of seconds that an IDP authentication is accepted by the application. If the IDP authentication occurred outside this time range, the application considers the value too old to trust and the authentication is not accepted.

The default is 14400 seconds (4 hours).
CSRF_TOKEN_ENABLED Enables the use of Spring CSRF token implementation.
CSRF_TOKEN_IGNORE_URL_PATTERN Requests URL patterns to be ignored for CSRF token validation.
CSRF_TOKEN_IGNORE_REFERER_PATTERN Requests header referer patterns to be ignored for CSRF token validation.

Note While CORS is still an optional configuration, it is required if you have SAML configured in Collibra DQ, or if you have Collibra DQ behind a load balancer.

CORS is also enforced for multi-tenancy.

Optional properties: meta-data

When SAML_METADATA_USE_URL is set to true (default), the following additional properties are available.

Property Description
SAML_METADATA_TRUST_CHECK

Whether to enable Collibra DQ to do trust verification of the identity provider.

The default value is false.
SAML_METADATA_REQUIRE_SIGNATURE

Whether Collibra DQ signs authentication requests to the identity provider.

The default value is false.
SAML_INCLUDE_DISCOVERY_EXTENSION

Whether to enable Collibra DQ to indicate in the SAML metadata that it’s able to consume responses from an IDP Discovery Service.

The default value is false.

Optional properties: load balancer

When SAML_LB_EXISTS is set to true, the following additional properties are available.

Property Description
SAML_LB_INCLUDE_PORT_IN_REQUEST

Whether to include the port number in the request.

The default value is false.
SAML_LB_PORT

The port number of the load balancer.

The default value is 443.
SAML_LB_SCHEME

The protocol of the load balancer.

The default value is https.
SAML_LB_SERVER_NAME

The server or DNS name.

Usually, the same as SAML_ENTITY_BASEURL without specifying the protocol, for example without https://.

This property is required and has no default.
SAML_LB_CONTEXT_PATH Any path that may be defined on the load balancer.

Example

#enable SAML & show the SAML SSO option on the login page
SAML_ENABLED=true

#set SSL communication properties for SAML
SAML_KEYSTORE_FILE=/keystore.p12
SAML_KEYSTORE_PASS=****
SAML_KEYSTORE_ALIAS=****

#in multi-tenant mode set the name of the IDP variable to hold the tenat name
SAML_TENANT_PROP_NAME=tenant

#set the name of the IDP variable to hold the user roles in the response
SAML_ROLES_PROP_NAME=memberOf

#allow login if authenticated to the IDP
SAML_GRANT_ALL_PUBLIC=true

#set the EntityId of the application to be supplied to the IDP
SAML_ENTITY_ID=OwlOneLogin

#optinally set a property that contains the username in the response
SAML_USER_NAME_PROP=""

#optionally use a file for the IDP metadata vs a URL (default is true)
SAML_METADATA_USE_URL=false 

#optional security settings to 
SAML_METADATA_TRUST_CHECK=false
SAML_METADATA_REQUIRE_SIGNATURE=false
SAML_INCLUDE_DISCOVERY_EXTENSION=false

2 Set up SSL

SSL is required by SAML. Follow the instructions provided in Setting up SSL (HTTPS).

To deploy SSL and SAML on self-hosted Kubernetes, see the section "Install with SAML enabled" in Deploy on Self-hosted Kubernetes.

3 Download service provider metadata for the IdP

Once you have enabled and configured SAML authentication, you can download the service provider metadata that is required by your identity provider from https://<your_dq_environment_url>/saml/metadata/SSO.

Important If you use Data Quality & Observability Classic with a Java version older than 17, such as Java 11, download your service provider metadata from https://<your_dq_environment_url>/saml/metadata instead.

4 Enable the SAML SSO sign in option

When you are ready with your IdP settings, add the final configuration settings in the Admin Console:

  1. Sign in to Data Quality & Observability Classic as an administrator with a username and password to the tenant you want to configure.
  2. Click Admin Console.
  3. Click User Management, then click SAML Security.
    4. The SAML Security Settings page opens.
  4. Click the SAML Enabled dropdown menu, then select Enabled.
  5. Under the SAML Enabled dropdown menu, to the far right side of the page, click Plus icon.
    6. The Add Meta Data Configuration dialog box appears.
  6. Enter the required information.
    7. Option Description
    Meta-Data URL

    The URL of the identity provider metadata XML file or the location of the downloaded XML file, depending on how you configured the SAML_METADATA_USE_URL property.

    Important The name of the XML file must begin with the prefix file: and typically uses file:/opt/owl/config/idp-metadata.xml format.
    Meta-Data Label The name for this specific configuration.
    IDP URL The URL of the Collibra DQ application that is provisioned by the identity provider.
    Note The IDP_URL is the IdP Initiated SSO login URL. For Example, in Azure, it would be https://myapps.microsoft.com/signin/<sp-app-id>?tenantId=<sp-tenant-id>. In multi-tenant mode, this URL should contain a RelayState for DQ to set the tenant on completing the SSO. For more information, go to Configuring multi-tenant support through SAML RelayState.
  7. Click Add.
  8. Restart the application and sign in using the SAML SSO option.

    9. Note SAML SSO authentication via the /v3/auth/signin API is not supported.

    Note SAML authentication is only supported for IdP-initiated requests.

  9. The user account has only basic access. To map user roles from AD to DQ roles, follow the instructions provided in AD Group to Role Mapping.