Book Image

IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 Security

By : Omar P Siliceo (USD)
Book Image

IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 Security

By: Omar P Siliceo (USD)

Overview of this book

In these days of high-profile hacking, server security is no less important than securing your application or network. In addition many companies must comply with government security regulations. No matter how secure your application is, your business is still at risk if your server is vulnerable. Here is how you solve your WebSphere server security worries in the best possible way. This tutorial is focused towards ways in which you can avoid security loop holes. You will learn to solve issues that can cause bother when getting started with securing your IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 installation. Moreover, the author has documented details in an easy-to-read format, by providing engaging hands-on exercises and mini-projects. The book starts with an in-depth analysis of the global and administrative security features of WebSphere Application Server v7.0, followed by comprehensive coverage of user registries for user authentication and authorization information. Moving on you will build on the concepts introduced and get hands-on with a mini project. From the next chapter you work with the different front-end architectures of WAS along with the Secure Socket Layer protocol, which offer transport layer security through data encryption. You learn user authentication and data encryption, which demonstrate how a clear text channel can be made safer by using SSL transport to encrypt its data. The book will show you how to enable an enterprise application hosted in a WebSphere Application Server environment to interact with other applications, resources, and services available in a corporate infrastructure. Platform hardening, tuning parameters for tightening security, and troubleshooting are some of the aspects of WebSphere Application Server v7.0 security that are explored in the book. Every chapter builds strong security foundations, by demonstrating concepts and practicing them through the use of dynamic, web-based mini-projects.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0 Security
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Concluding WebSphere security-related tips


We conclude this chapter by listing several tips that may come in handy as you continue your work with WAS ND7, specifically in the area of security. The tips included next are in no particular order.

Using wildcards in virtual hosts: never do it!

Many times, when creating virtual hosts, some administrators do not bother to fine-tune the default configuration for the hostname, focusing only on the port. When one clicks on the New button to create a new alias, one sees a page that contains the portion shown in the following screenshot:

Never use the alias pair: host name "*"; port "80".

Ensuring best practice: set tracing from wide to specific search pattern

When turning on tracing in order to troubleshoot any type of problem in general and security in particular, one needs to keep in mind that WebSphere logging and tracing parses the trace string from left to right. This means that the trace string element at the left can be overridden by another element...