Usually I provide partner wsdl to external system to connect with my Salesforce Org. Externla system call the SOAP API login() and get the session id. I am trying to implement Oauth as the authentication mechanism and I looked at - https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/intro_understanding_username_password_oauth_flow.htm
I see the external system has to hit the endpoint - https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token , and passing the following, I will be providing them these details :
- grant_type
- client_id
- client_secret
- username
- password
Obviously the external system has to store all the above values in their application. I read about below paragraph from OAuth article - https://developer.salesforce.com/page/Using_OAuth_to_Authorize_External_Applications where it says OAuth will be a secure way of connection because only access token is used and credential are not stored anywhere.
Why Should I Use OAuth? For your end users the major benefit of OAuth is security. If an external website's datastore is hacked and all of their passwords are compromised, the hackers have full access to sensitive user info. Instead of a user's credentials scattered around various sites on the Internet, using OAuth the user simply issues access tokens to individual websites that need access to their data. If a site's access token and consumer secret are compromised, then the user or provider can revoke them. In most provider cases a request authorized with an access token is not authorized to update specific aspects of the user's account, such as the password or email. With Force.com, access to data is restricted by the user's profile and its settings. Users can easily revoke a consumer application's access to their data by revoking the token from their Personal Information page under Personal Setup. For developers, OAuth makes life much simpler. Gone are the days where you have to store your username, password and security token in your application code or create bespoke login schemes. Both of these methods are fraught with danger and cause developers to lose sleep - if your application's security is compromised or your code is decompiled, then every affected user must be notified of the security breach and have their password reset. Not only is this embarrassing but a security breach could lead to legal actions. If your credentials are coded into multiple applications and you happen to change your user's password, then you must undertake the tedious task of updating each application with the new credentials. Nothing is better on a rainy day than chasing down applications that now have wrong credentials.
I feel that external system has to store the username and password somewhere and it can be compromised in this case. How does OAuth makes it secure? May be I have not understood it correct. If So, please shed some light on this topic.
Update:
There is no user interface involved in this connection and it is two system connecting with each other. SO there won't be any option to enter the userid and password by someone.
