Setting limits for login sessions

Setting duration of active sessions

An active session is how long a user is continuously working in their account. How an active session is gauged also depends on the duration of your session sign out due to inactivity limit. For instance, if you set the sign out to 2 hours, then the user would need to interact with the account one time between those 2 hours.

To update your user's active sessions settings, complete the following steps:

1. In the IBM Cloud console, click Manage > Access (IAM), and select Settings.
2. From the Login session section, click the Edit icon from the Active sessions tile.
3. Enter the time limit. The longest a session can last is 720 hours.
4. Click Save.

Setting duration of active sessions by using Terraform

An active session is how long a user is continuously working in their account. How an active session is gauged also depends on the duration of your session sign out due to inactivity limit. For instance, if you set the sign out to 2 hours, then the user would need to interact with the account one time between those 2 hours.

To update your user's active sessions settings by using terraform, complete the following steps:

1. Create an argument in your main.tf file. The following example sets the duration of an active session by using the ibm_iam_account_settings and iam_account_settings_instance resources.

2. Enter the period of time in seconds in which you want a session to invalidate due to inactivity. Supported valid values are

   • Any whole number between between 900 and 7200.
   • Use NOT_SET to unset account setting and use service default.

   resource "ibm_iam_account_settings" "iam_account_settings_instance" {
   session_invalidation_in_seconds = "7200"
   }
   

3. Provision the resources from the main.tf file. For more information, see Provisioning Infrastructure with Terraform.

   1. Run terraform plan to generate a Terraform execution plan to preview the proposed actions.

      terraform plan
      

   2. Run terraform apply to create the resources that are defined in the plan.

      terraform apply
      

For more information, see the Terraform documentation.

Setting the sign out due to inactivity duration

An inactive session is when the user hasn't completed any requests that send a token for validation for the duration selected. If the sign out due to inactivity duration is 1 hour, then the user will be signed out after an hour if they haven't done anything in their account in that time. To update your user's sign out due to inactivity settings, complete the following steps.

1. In the IBM Cloud console, click Manage > Access (IAM), and select Settings.
2. From the Login session section, click the Edit icon from the Sign out due to inactivity tile.
3. Enter the time limit. The longest an inactive session can last is 24 hours.
4. Click Save.

Setting the sign out due to inactivity duration by using Terraform

An inactive session is when the user hasn't completed any requests that send a token for validation for the duration selected. If the sign out due to inactivity duration is 1 hour, then the user will be signed out after an hour if they haven't done anything in their account in that time. To update your user's sign out due to inactivity settings, complete the following steps.

To update your user's sign out due to inactivity duration by using terraform, complete the following steps:

1. Create an argument in your main.tf file. The following example sets the inactive sign out by using the ibm_iam_account_settings and iam_account_settings_instance resources.

2. Enter the period of time in seconds in which you want a session to invalidate due to inactivity. Supported valid values are

   • Any whole number between between 900 and 7200.
   • Use NOT_SET to unset account setting and use service default.

   resource "ibm_iam_account_settings" "iam_account_settings_instance" {
     session_expiration_in_seconds = "3600"
   }
   

3. Provision the resources from the main.tf file. For more information, see Provisioning Infrastructure with Terraform.

   1. Run terraform plan to generate a Terraform execution plan to preview the proposed actions.

      terraform plan
      

   2. Run terraform apply to create the resources that are defined in the plan.

      terraform apply
      

For more information, see the Terraform documentation.

Setting the number of allowed concurrent sessions

You can choose the maximum number of concurrent sessions that are allowed for your account users. Concurrent sessions are active sessions that the user is signed into at one time. Users can have multiple sessions open by using different browsers or several logins with the IBM Cloud CLI. Multiple concurrent sessions are more beneficial for parallel workloads.

1. In the IBM Cloud console, click Manage > Access (IAM), and select Settings.
2. From the Concurrent sessions tile, click the Edit icon , click the Unlimited dropdown > Limit sessions.
3. Enter the limit. Users can have an unlimited number of concurrent sessions.
4. Click Save.

Setting the number of allowed concurrent sessions by using Terraform

You can choose the maximum number of concurrent sessions that are allowed for your account users. Concurrent sessions are active sessions that the user is signed into at one time. Users can have multiple sessions open by using different browsers or several logins with the IBM Cloud CLI. Multiple concurrent sessions are more beneficial for parallel workloads.

To update your user's allowed number of concurrent sessions by using terraform, complete the following steps:

1. Create an argument in your main.tf file. The following example sets the number of allowed concurrent sessions by using the ibm_iam_account_settings and iam_account_settings_instance resources.

2. Enter the period of time in seconds in which you want a session to invalidate due to inactivity. Supported valid values are

   • Any whole number greater than '0'.
   • Use NOT_SET to unset account setting and use service default.

   resource "ibm_iam_account_settings" "iam_account_settings_instance" {
    max_sessions_per_identity = "3"
   }
   

3. Provision the resources from the main.tf file. For more information, see Provisioning Infrastructure with Terraform.

   1. Run terraform plan to generate a Terraform execution plan to preview the proposed actions.

      terraform plan
      

   2. Run terraform apply to create the resources that are defined in the plan.

      terraform apply
      

For more information, see the Terraform documentation.