Understanding how Cognos BI security works and setting up the proper security is essential in any reporting environment for information that needs to be protected. The need to protect data can be based on how sensitive the data is to your stakeholders, or it could be governed by laws and regulations such as we see with healthcare and financial information. To understand how Cognos BI security all ties together, we will start by looking at an overview of the various pieces of Cognos BI security.
The Cognos Application Firewall (CAF) can be turned on inside of Cognos Configuration. You simply set Enable CAF validation? to True and restart your environment:
The CAF will protect your environment from outside attacks. It is a very good idea to leave the CAF turned on with outward-facing environments that are not secured heavily by other means.
The only major drawback of the CAF being turned on is that it limits use by external applications to Cognos BI. Because...