2.2 Components and Capabilities
The primary purpose of this overview document is to describe the protocols that support AD FS. These protocols are useful only within an AD FS environment. The environment is primarily (either directly or indirectly) one in which a security token service (STS) is running in order to handle security token concerns. In these cases, the AD FS protocols are best described in terms of an STS, as is done in some of the sections that follow. The AD FS environment might also be called upon to handle JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) for public-key authentication. This scenario is described in the sections that follow in terms of authentication using JWTs.