Kevin,
I believe administration and security are primary reasons,
i.e. administration internal network versus some external segment of it can
be cleanly separated. They follow different rules of access control and
different levels of protection (access control levels in internal network
vs. password protected URLs and HTTPS in Web environment).
Second (or derived from the first) reason might be a granularity of security
administration is different. Thus, you have a strict controlled internal
environment, while Web server is rather exposed and so security there
follows some rather lax rules.
Probably these are others (above my grasp) are reasons that companies set
production servers outside their "controlled networks" into DMZ.
So lets think of that:
1. Forms reside in DMZ for many high-volume production sites.
2. DMZs are exposed to hackers, I believe Sun official party line calls them
semi-secure zones, often exposed to hacker attacks and manipulation.
3. Derived from that, software residing in DMZ should not have any cleartext
(or unencrypted) access to sensitive resources (database, etc). Passwords
should not be hardcoded in your Java code (or this can be easily decompiled)
running on that machine, or reside on the text or XML file on the same
computer (but be hidden beyond the firewall).
I do not pretend to understand fully how easy it is to hack the DMZ area,
but I assume that it is not as difficult as to get behind the firewall, and
that means distributing processing environment to DMZ (presentation/proxy)
and firewall (Controller/CommandAction/Beans/etc) layers, with communication
in-between protected by encryption.
Regards,
Vadim.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Duffey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 3:33 PM
To: Shun, Vadim
Subject: RE: Model 2 and security
Very interesting. I was wondering what DMZ meant as well. ;) Can you give
me one or more reasons why any site would have a "non-secure" (so to speak)
portion of the site available beyond the firewall? If the firewall permits
Http to come through, and the web site is Http, then why would part of it
need to be outside the firewall risking any security?
My only thought is a VPN, where you expose a server to outside incoming
connections via modem, so that say, employees can get full network access.
But I don't even know if this is a good example because today you can have
dsl/cable at home, and go over the internet through a network based VPN with
no dialup access.
Thanks..appreciate your explanation(s).
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