Allow CP4BA front door (Zen) to natively honor and accept tokens provided directly by external IdPs

Our partner applications consume CP4BA REST APIs to support key business functionalities.

Currently, these partner applications authenticate using tokens issued by external Identity Providers (IdPs), such as PingFederate, and send these tokens to CP4BA when invoking REST APIs.

At present, the CP4BA front door (Zen) does not natively honor or accept tokens provided directly by external IdPs. As a workaround, IBM Support recommended implementing a Custom Authentication Service.

With this approach:

• Zen forwards requests containing a specific configured header to a customer-implemented custom authentication service
• This service validates the external token (e.g., PingFed) and returns the authenticated user context to Zen

While this solution works, it requires customers to:

• Design, develop, and maintain custom authentication logic
• Host and manage an additional service outside the CP4BA platform
• Handle ongoing operational and security responsibilities for this component

Enhancement Request:

We request IBM to provide native support within Zen to:

• Validate and honor external IdP tokens (e.g., OIDC/JWT tokens from PingFederate)
• Eliminate the need for a customer-managed Custom Authentication Service
• Enable direct authentication for CP4BA REST APIs using externally issued tokens

Expected Benefits:

• Simplifies integration with enterprise identity providers
• Reduces architectural complexity and operational overhead
• Improves security by removing the need for custom authentication layers
• Provides a more standardized and seamless authentication model

This enhancement would significantly improve the developer and integration experience for customers leveraging CP4BA in enterprise environments.