This book covers security topics on a wide range of areas in ASP.NET 2.0. It starts with detailed coverage of how security is applied when an ASP.NET application starts up and when a request is processed. The book then branches out to cover security information for features such as trust levels, forms authentication, session state, page security, and configuration system security. You will also see how you can integrate ASP.NET security with legacy ASP applications. Over the course of these topics, you will gain a solid understanding of many of the less publicized security features in ASP.NET 2.0.

The book switches gears in Chapter 9 and addresses two new security services in ASP.NET 2.0: Membership and Role Manager. You start out learning about the provider model that underlies both of these features. Then you will get a detailed look at the internals of both features, as well as the SQLand Active Directory–based providers that are included with them. After reading through these topics, you will have a thorough background on how you can work with the new providers and how you can extend them in your applications.

This book is intended for developers who already have a solid understanding of ASP.NET 1.1 security concepts in the area of forms authentication, page security, and website authorization. Where the book addresses new functionality, such as Membership and Role Manager, it assumes that you have already used these features and have a good understanding of the general functionality provided by both of
them. As a result, this book does not rehash widely available public information on various features or
API reference documentation.