DACS is a light-weight single sign-on and role-based access control system for web servers and server-based software.

It is also an authentication and authorization toolkit for programmers. DACS makes secure resource sharing and remote access via the web easier, safer, and more efficient.

Essentially, DACS does just two things: authenticate users and perform authorization checks. Its authentication framework is flexible, extensible, and supports many commonly used authentication methods out-of-the-box.

Authorization checking is implemented by a general-purpose, rule-driven access control engine. These two subsystems are often used together, making it easy to deploy a single sign-on, access controlled group of web sites. Either of the subsystems can also be applied directly by software developers to just about any application.

Features and Components:

• universal, extensible, modular, and efficient authentication methods, including two-factor authentication and hardware tokens;


• powerful, comprehensive, rule-based authorization checking that can be applied selectively and transparently to any resource or activity (such as web services, web content, and program features) by Apache-based web services, CGI programs, servlets, or virtually any program or script;


• secure, web-based single sign-on (SSO);


• flexible, programmable configuration;


• an Apache 2.0/2.2 module, suite of CGI-based programs, and collection of command line tools for Unix-type platforms (GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Cygwin, and others).