Kerberos in PowerTerm Solutions

PowerTerm solutions now offer Kerberos support.


Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography.

The following diagram illustrates the process:




Kerberos Benefits include:
  • Enables secure authentication and data stream encryption for Telnet.
  • On Windows 2000 and higher if there is no configuration file, PowerTerm automatically imports configuration information from windows.
  • Provides DES and 3DES encryption.
  • Can be configured to use Windows XP Pro and Windows 2003 server-issued credentials when ticket-granting-ticket (TGT) is needed.
  • Allows mutual authentication, data-stream encryption, ticket forwarding, and renewal capability for connections to Kerberos-Telnet.
  • Can configure sessions to allow for application-specific settings.
  • Supports encrypted, timestamp pre-authentication.
  • Supports one ticket cache with the file storage method.
  • Includes Kerberos Manager for ease of credentials management and realm configuration.
  • Simplifies deployment with realm configuration settings file.


The Kerberos protocol uses strong cryptography so that a client can prove its identity to a server (and vice versa) across an insecure network connection. After a client and server have used Kerberos to prove their identity, they can also encrypt all of their communications to assure privacy and data integrity as they go about their business.