Binary Data is Not Supported for POST Preservation (SiteMinder)

Products

• SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

Does the SiteMinder POST Preservation feature support binary data, such as Excel file attachments?

Environment

• Product: SiteMinder (Policy Server and Web Agent)
• Versions: 12.8, 12.9
• Feature: POST Preservation

Resolution

You cannot use the POST Preservation feature to preserve binary data. This feature supports text data only.

If you attempt to use POST Preservation with binary data (for example, when an idle timeout occurs during a POST request that includes an Excel attachment), the data may become corrupted or the preservation process may fail to transmit the file properly. This is because binary data handling is not supported by design for this feature.

Workaround

To ensure that large file attachments or binary data are processed correctly without interruption, you can consider disabling the Idle Timeout setting for the specific protected resource. This prevents the authentication redirect that triggers the POST Preservation process during a file upload.