Citrix: How to Easily Host a Multi-Auth Landing Page on NetScaler Gateway

This blog post will show you how to create a NetScaler Gateway that will host a simple landing page that can provide access to Gateways with different authentication options. Below is an example landing page that specifies smartcard as the main authentication method and RADIUS with username/password for users who have an exception.

I know some of you are wondering, “Doesn’t nFactor provide the option of allowing different factors of authentication on one Gateway?” The answer is YES, however, nFactor may not fit everyone’s use case. For example, say nFactor is configured with smartcard authentication and fallback is RADIUS with username/password. When users go to the NetScaler Gateway URL with their smartcard inserted, there is no actual log on page. They will receive a prompt to choose a certificate and type their PIN and then are taken to StoreFront. The user will not see any sort of disclaimer or Terms & Conditions. If their smartcard is not inserted, they will be taken to the RADIUS log on portal, which will show fields to type their username, password, and PIN. The problem here is that users cannot recover and go back to smartcard authentication, without closing their browser, if they have already fallen back to RADIUS by accident.

This is where a landing page would be useful. A landing page can let users who use smartcards know that they reached the Citrix logon page. It can also give users an opportunity to insert their smartcards after they reached the Gateway if they had forgotten. Additionally, all users will be able to see any disclaimers or help desk information.  Using a NetScaler to host the landing page instead of a web server also eliminates the need of using additional resources to provide hosting and high availability.  In addition, a web server would introduce another hop between the user and the Gateway.  Note that the NetScaler is NOT a full-fledged web server and should not host high-traffic or dynamic production web sites.

Read the entire article here, How to Easily Host a Multi-Auth Landing Page on NetScaler Gateway

Via the fine folks at Citrix Systems, Inc.