Smartcard Sharepoint Password prompt

Question

I work in an organization that uses smartcard login. Passwords are not be used.

When opening an attachment in Sharepoint, we are prompted with a username/password dialog. Clicking cancel will allow the document to open. However, we have users that will enter their username and PIN in the block, which will lock their account out.

Obviously, the primary answer is user training, that a PIN and a password are not the same.

I do not have control over the server. The people that do control the server do not know how to resolve the issue. Their answer is "Wait until the new SharePoint server is set up, and that will fix it," which leads me to beleive there IS a way to fix it, but they either don't know how, or can't do it.

Do you guys have any ideas of somewhere I can point them?

Answer 1

The IIS server running the Sharepoint site should have picked up the domain auth requirements (assuming you set your "Require smart card authentication" GPO on the user side rather than the workstation GPO). But since it's not, you can go into the IIS Server configuration and require "certificate-based authentication". This will prompt users to supply a certificate for authentication. On Windows 7 at least, it will detect the certificates in their Personal certificate store that are copied over when they insert their smart card and display that for use with authentication.

More information on configuring the IIS Server, check out http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732116.aspx