Hi Pierre! I understand your dilemma perfectly well. > So, do we have to conclude that Mediawiki isn't a good choice for an > enterprise (with these requierements) ??? Essencialy, yeah, MediaWiki sucks for the situations where you have sensitive data stored on your pages and possible attackers.
> And no money for paid wikis (Confluence and cie). Well that's weird. You've described that the wiki will be used in such a big scale... it seems to be pretty important project to spend several thousand bucks (=salary of 1-3 employees for month) on it and buy the TWiki or Confluence license. For MediaWiki I can recommend IntraACL as well, but you have to be sure that there is no potential attackers in your case. ----- Yury Katkov, WikiVote On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Pierre Labrecque <pierre.labrec...@live.ca> wrote: > So, do we have to conclude that Mediawiki isn't a good choice for an > enterprise (with these requierements) ??? I can't say to our management: "hey > ! pay for a developer to patch Lockdown and the core...and in a couple of > months/years, the hole system may fail after an upgrade of MW..." > (caricature). :-) > > The context: > 1- many customers: for each customers, we have many teams to support them. > Each of these teams needs a "secure space" for its documents. > 2- of course, all these teams (dedicated to different customers) share some > general documents. We don't need or want to secure everything: a lot of stuff > can be shared by everyone. > > Here is the design we try to explore actually: > 1- create a shared wiki (in our office) > 2- create a single wiki, on the network of a customer (so if 100 customers, > it means 100 wikis: one per customer, each one on the customer network) > > As it doesn't make sense for us that an employee of customer X visits the > shared wiki to have access to general documents, then visits its own wiki (on > the customer network) to access restricted stuff, we though to put in place a > system where the admin of the customer wiki access the shared wiki and pulls > some interesting info from the shared to the customer wiki. It has its > limits... just a possibility... > > So let's say it's a good idea... it means that the customer wiki will be > accessible by all our employees dedicated to this customer... but in this > wiki, there are many documents too, that we need to secure too. > So: > > 1- Shared Wiki: (accessible by all admin of customer wikis, these admin pull > info from it to put general stuff in their own wiki) > 2- Customers Wikis (accessible by our people, located on the customers > facilities) > 3- Customers Wikis: accessible by each of our employees, dedicated to this > customers. So if Jack and Daniel work for CompanyA, it means that both will > log into the CompanyA wiki. > 4- Customers Wikis: Jack and Daniel have different roles. Jack is a computer > technician and must have access to general software procedures. Daniel works > with servers and is specialized in the firewall configuration of this > customer... Jack should not see the stuff of Daniel, right ? We believe that > this info is sensitive... So it means that we need to secure some namespace > (for example) to prevent Jack to access Daniel stuff... So LockDown extension > ? > 5- Security: here, if MW with Lockdown fails, it will be a failure which will > stay on the customer network (damage is limited, but absolutely not > desirable!!!). That's one of the reason we prefer to separate general stuff > (shared wiki) from the customer wiki (sensitive): isolation of the failure. > If we put Lockdown on a single wiki, shared by all, and that a failure > occurs: it means that every customer may be able to access the data of > everyone else (firewall config for example...). > > That's where we are for now... > Yes: Dokuwiki, MoinMoin, etc... have ACL and are cerftainly the best choice > for medium size wikis. But what's append with these wiki engines when you > have 200/300/400 000 - 1 000 000 pages ? Are they seriously designed to > support all these pages/images/doc, etc ? The search feature will become slow > ? etc... we don't know... > And no money for paid wikis (Confluence and cie). > > What else: there are a tons of wiki engines. Why we prefer to have Mediawiki > ? Well... to be honest... it's Mediawiki :-) > > I sincerely hope that my English is clear... :-) > > Cheers ! > > -----Original Message----- > From: mediawiki-enterprise-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org > [mailto:mediawiki-enterprise-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Yury > Katkov > Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 6:32 PM > To: MediaWiki for enterprises > Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-enterprise] How do you manage the security in your > Mediawiki installation (Enterprise wiki) ? > > I guess that one option for you will be to hire somebody or some company for > developing Lockdown further so that they can cover all the holes from which > the information can bet got. HalloWelt itself is a perfect candidate and we > also have a lot more developers available [1]. Probably you will also want to > hire different contractor that will try to steal the data from the modified > extension. > > Of course, after some time the extension will stop working because of ugly > hacks that will definetely appear in the code. > > Another and more proper solution is not so fast, that is: to lobby the proper > ACL support in MediaWiki core before starting development. > MediaWiki is used as an enterprise wiki and the impossibility of good ACL > should not be considered as not some kind of philosophy of the software (as > some people claims) but as a bug that needs fixing. Still even in this case > the actual development of ACL won't be done by WMF - they aren't just > interested in it. But if we would have carte blanche for patching the core > and not been declined because "MW is an Open System, it has not been Designed > to allow ACL support", I think many parties will be interested to fund the > development. > > [1] www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Professional_development_and_consulting > ----- > Yury Katkov, WikiVote > > > > On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 1:36 AM, Pierre Labrecque <pierre.labrec...@live.ca> > wrote: >> Hello, >> >> >> >> We continue to do our homeworks concerning a project we have to build >> a wiki for our enterprise: 80 000 employees, but only 1000 of them >> could have access to the wiki: usually in read, some people in >> read/write. We will need per namespace security: some namespaces >> should not be read by some groups… We don’t want to go with many tons >> of wikis installation… >> >> >> >> I wrote a post on another mailing list about it a couple of days ago: >> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/mediawiki/381274 >> >> I had some very good and helpful comments, but it’s after that I found >> another mailing list (this one), which seems dedicated to the >> enterprise usage of Mediaiwki. >> >> >> >> Here are the requierement we have: >> >> >> >> Main page >> >> - NamespaceA (read for departmentA only) >> >> - NamespaceB (read for departmentB only) >> >> - …. >> >> - NamespaceZ (read for departmentZ) >> >> Sometimes, someone of departmentA will need read access to NamespaceZ, >> etc… >> >> >> >> I would like to have some testimonials: your experiences, your >> recommendations… on a specific aspect of Mediawiki: ACL !!! (recurring >> topic, I believe…). >> >> >> >> I read >> http://blog.blue-spice.org/2012/10/23/mediawiki-vs-confluence-not-a-qu >> estion-of-features/ and found that they use Lockdown and some other >> extensions around it, to secure the wiki >> >> As everyone, I read >> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Security_issues_with_authorization_exten >> sions >> and >> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Page_specific_user_rights_exten >> sions >> >> So, I wrote to BlueSpice team to know if they believe that Lockdown is >> really secure to write sensitive data in a Mediawiki wiki. Answer was >> honest: no (as expected). >> >> >> >> I wrote also to the guy who founded Intelpedia (Josh Bancroft) and he >> confirms that Mediawiki is the wrong tool to manage that kind of ACL >> and that they use other tools for sensitive data, not their wiki… I >> didn’t insist to know which other tool… I was impressed that a guy at >> this level take the time to answer me, so… J >> >> >> >> Anyway, could you tell me what is the kind of setup you have on this >> side >> (ACL) ? Certainly that some of you use in the facts an ACL extension >> (Lockdown or others) ? Do you trust them ? Do you have implement some >> other kind of security ? etc… Wikifarm ? etc… >> >> >> Sincerely, I believe I have read enough on the web about the subject… >> now, I need some concrete experiences, from real persons, in real >> enterprises,… >> >> >> >> Voilà. >> >> >> >> Thanks ! >> >> >> >> Pierre >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mediawiki-enterprise mailing list >> Mediawiki-enterprise@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-enterprise >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mediawiki-enterprise mailing list > Mediawiki-enterprise@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-enterprise > > > _______________________________________________ > Mediawiki-enterprise mailing list > Mediawiki-enterprise@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-enterprise _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-enterprise mailing list Mediawiki-enterprise@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-enterprise
