1.6 Applicability Statement

The digest authentication mechanism is used in environments that require users to authenticate to servers to access secure resources. Note that Kerberos (for more information, see [MS-KILE]) and public key–based authentication offer stronger security guarantees both in terms of initial authentication and subsequent confidentiality and integrity of client/server traffic.

The digest authentication mechanism can be used in environments where these stronger mechanisms are not available and can serve for interoperability purposes with multiple vendors, browsers, web servers, and directory services.