In this article, I would like to share the procedure for enabling/disabling the authentication for a SharePoint web application in IIS.
Understand Anonymous Authentication
Anonymous access is the most common website access control method. It allows anyone to visit the public area of a website while preventing the unauthorized users from gaining access to a web server's critical administrative features and private information.
You can modify the “Anonymous Authentication” element to disable Anonymous authentication, or you can configure Internet Information Services (IIS) to use a custom user account to process anonymous requests.
By default, IIS 7 uses Anonymous Authentication. You must disable Anonymous Authentication for any web site, web application, or web service for which you want to enable other authentication methods such as Basic or Windows Authentication.
Procedure to disable anonymous authentication
Use the following procedure to disable the anonymous authentication.
Step 1: Open Internet Information Services (IIS) from your computer.
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From the Windows ![]()
button type “inetmgr” in the search box and then click the Enter key, IIS will be opened on your machine.
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Step 2: When IIS opens, you will see the Start page. In the Connection pane, expand the server name and then expand the sites as shown below.
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Step 3: Then go to the level in the hierarchy pane that you want to configure then click the web site or web application as shown below.
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Step 4: In home pane, double-click on the authentication in the security section.
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Step 5: When you select the authentication, you will be navigated to the authentication page, there you can disable the anonymous authentication.
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Step 6: In the authentication pane, select the anonymous authentication and right-click the mouse, you will get the disable option as shown below.
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Step 7: Then click on the disable option, Anonymous Authentication will be disabled in your IIS.
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You can use the same procedure as above to enable the authentication.
Summary
In this article we explored how to disable and enable the authentication for web applications in IIS.