| About InfoWorld : Advertise : Subscribe : Contact Us : Awards : Events : Store |
 |
||||
|
||||
 | ||||
 |
|
|||
 | ||||
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 NEWSe-Gap beta effectively shuttles apps, data By David Piscitello, For InfoWorld Test Center March 3, 2000 IN AN AGE OF Web presence, e-commerce, and mobile workforces, enterprises that must allow these types of network access face a unique conundrum: They must permit selected inbound access from the Internet to a company's Web servers, while also allowing customers, business partners, and supply-chain partners to access corporate databases and e-business applications.
Security administrators joke that the best way to secure a server is to remove it from a network, and Whale Communications' e-Gap system does just that. It combines physical separation, or "air gap," hardware with file transfer and transaction software that shuttles application data between external networks and internal servers to insulate the internal servers from TCP/IP-and OS-based attacks. In addition, e-Gap can enhance security considerably for businesses that simply cannot put sensitive data at risk. Because I tested a beta version, it did not receive a score; however, I found the system architecture simple and elegant, and the GUI easy to navigate and use. The beta version of the e-Gap configuration application still has minor software bugs. On occasion, I had to repeat commands to have them take effect. However, this will most likely be fixed by the time the product ships in March. Owl Computing Technologies' Secure DTFS provides a similar solution to enable one-way inflow file transfer from external to internal LANs, but does not allow the read/write transactions that e-Gap does. The standard e-Gap system deployment consists of a nonprogrammable switching device, the e-Gap Appliance, and two Windows NT servers. I connected an NT server located on my "extranet" subnet to the external SCSI interface of my e-Gap Appliance -- a memory bank from which access is governed by an analog switch. I then connected an NT server representing my back-office server to the internal SCSI interface of the e-Gap Appliance. Next I installed Transaction and file transfer software on both servers. These software shuttles transfer application data across the e-Gap Appliance, over virtual connections ("trunks") you construct via the e-Gap software's GUI. In a typical transaction or data transfer, one server writes application data to the memory bank. The e-Gap Appliance disconnects the memory bank from this server upon completion of the write operation and connects to the other server, which then may read the data. No unauthorized data can pass through the air gap, and all data delivered to the internal NT server can be inspected. To test the e-Gap system, I performed basic Web inquiries and ran SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)-encrypted sessions from my desktop browser to an internal Web server using the Transaction Shuttle. The internal servers are protected from TCP/IP-based attacks because these protocols are not forwarded through the shuttle; so if your external server is being subjected to a denial of service attack, your back-office server would remain immune and would continue to operate. I ran a series of scans and attacks using a commercial network scanner and penetration testing tools and could not access the internal server. For secure transactions, the SSL protocol is shuttled to the internal host, so sensitive data remains encrypted while passing through the external server and are decrypted only when the data is transferred via the e-Gap Appliance to the internal server. The SSL server's private key and any local databases used (such as for authentication) reside safely on the internal host(s) as well. To test the File Shuttle, I created mirrored directories on both the external and internal servers, and set up a "drop-box." When someone drops a file into the directory on the external server, e-Gap immediately removes it from that directory and shuttles it into the internal directory, where it can be quarantined until it is inspected. The e-Gap shuttles prevent access to internal servers, but do not prevent malicious code from passing between the external server and the internal server. However, the e-Gap software can be complemented with mobile-code filters, content inspection, and application-specific filters to provide greater security. The application shuttles are nicely complemented by a real-time monitoring application and helpful logging facilities. IT managers who must maintain stringent access control and integrity policies on mission-critical servers should consider the e-Gap system a complement to conventional extranet and intranet security measures, despite the minor problems I encountered with the user interface. David Piscitello (dave@corecom.com) is president of Core Competence, a network consulting company.
 RELATED SUBJECTS  ServersSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
SPONSORED LINKS
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
