WebSphere Application Server V6 Advanced Security Enhancement, part 1th (i)

This article is based on the security chapters of the IBM Websphere:deployment and Advanced Configuration book. This article has been significantly updated for WebSphere application Server V6 and has been edited to discuss security-enhancing aspects only. The text has been edited and typeset to be published as a separate article. Although this article is based on the WebSphere application Server V6, most of the problems here also apply to V5 and V5.1. One of the problems is peculiar to V6, which we will specifically point out. In addition, almost all other content is suitable for these three major versions, but screenshots and samples are from V6.

Introduction

In this article, we will describe several aspects of security. We'll start with a brief discussion of why security is important, and then describe the WebSphere application Server security architecture in detail. This article describes some of the key aspects of WebSphere Application Server security, and then discusses in detail how to strengthen the WebSphere Application server environment to make it more secure. Finally, we will provide some tips on troubleshooting security issues. Due to the limited space, a lot of the content of this material is general, without detailed analysis. We will try to provide our readers with appropriate references for the relevant details.

Why do I need security?

Thankfully, most readers are aware that security is a key aspect of an enterprise system. However, in order to introduce some common methods of understanding security, we will still briefly introduce security.

The basic purpose of security is to prevent malicious people from entering your system. More precisely, security is a process that uses a variety of techniques to prevent unauthorized access to content by an unauthorised user, or, typically, an intruder.

There are many types of external intruders: foreign espionage agencies, your competitors, hackers, and even your own employees. Each intruder has different motivations, different skills and knowledge, different access points, and different levels of requirements. For example:

Employees may have aggressive motives for the company, and although employees have very high levels of internal access and system knowledge, their resources and hacking skills may be limited.

External hackers may be experts in security attacks, but they may not be motivated to attack you.

Foreign espionage agencies may be interested in attacking you (depending on your business) and have a wealth of resources.

Intruders may invade your system for one or two reasons: to get information they shouldn't have, or to change the system's normal health in some way. In the latter case, by changing the health of the system, they can seek to perform a transaction that is advantageous to them, or they are simply trying to cause your system to crash in a meaningful way, causing damage to your organization.

As you can see, there are many different types of intruders, many different motivations, and many different types of attacks (we will discuss later). You must be aware of these when you plan for security.

We also want to stress that security should not be seen only as a barrier to "outsiders". That's a simplistic view. Many organizations now focus their security entirely on people outside the organization who mistakenly believe that only the outside is dangerous. This is not actually the case. People within the organization are also more likely to attack your system. Recent studies have shown that nearly half of the intrusions may be caused by (or involving) employees or contract workers within the organization.

Even if you assume that everyone in the network is trustworthy, can you assume that they never make mistakes? Given the rampant spread of viruses through e-mail, it would be foolhardy to assume that the entire internal network could be trusted. Can't do that.

Your security should try to protect your system against all potential intruders. That's why this article is so long and divided into two parts. Security is not just a firewall that protects your system from "external" attacks at the edge of the network, it is also a difficult and complex set of operations and processes designed to strengthen your system as much as possible.

Limitations and the realities of the situation

It is important to recognize that there is no perfect security system. Your goal is to protect the system as much as possible under business constraints. When considering security, it should theoretically:

Analyze multiple aspects of an attack.

Consider the hazards of each attack.

Determine the likelihood of an attack being successful and causing security to be compromised.

Evaluate the cost of preventing each attack.

When estimating the damage caused by security breaches, don't forget that security breaches can cause system users to lose confidence in your system. As a result, the "cost of security breach" may include very high overhead costs (e.g., loss of investor trust).