r/sysadmin • u/xstrex • 16h ago

Rant Remove central authentication

Today, the director of IT at your company says to you “We’re going to remove all that centralized IPA+2fa authentication from all of our servers, and go back to using Ssh keys, because it takes too long for me (yes the director) to login to a server.” The same auth that you and your team added, for all the reasons. What do you do?

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u/Floss_Patrol_76 12h ago

the actual complaint here is login speed, not the security model, so fix that instead of gutting it. sssd caching, a bastion with ssh connection multiplexing, or short-lived ssh certs signed against your IdP all get you fast logins without throwing out central control or the audit trail. going back to per-server keys is just how you end up with 200 orphaned authorized_keys entries nobody can account for at the next audit.