The act of logging into the system. The Out of the box (OOTB) authenticaton implementation in Rice does not require a password as it is intended for testing puposes only. This is something that must be enabled as part of an implementation. Various authentication solutions exist, such as CAS or Shibboleth, that an implementer may want to use depending on their needs. CAS is used OOTB for authentication in KEN. Authentication is pluggable in KEN so that other authentication mechanisms can be implemented for a given installation. See the KEN Authentication - Technical Guide (0.9.3) for details on plugging in a new authentication mechanism.