Placing cpu ip alongside the firewall, Security measures – Lindy CPU IP Access Switch Plus User Manual
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Placing CPU IP alongside the firewall
CPU IP is built from the ground-up to be secure. It employs a sophisticated
128bit public/private key system that has been rigorously analysed and found to
be highly secure. Therefore, you can position the CPU IP alongside the firewall
and control hosts that are also IP connected within the local network.
IMPORTANT: If you make the CPU IP accessible from the public Internet or from
a modem, care should be taken to ensure that the maximum security available
is activated. You are strongly advised to enable encryption and use a strong
password. Security may be further improved by restricting client IP addresses,
using a non-standard port number for access or limiting remote access to dial up
connections only.
Ensuring sufficient security
The security capabilities offered by the CPU IP are only truly effective when they
are correctly used. An open or weak password or unencrypted link can cause
security loopholes and opportunities for potential intruders. For network links
in general and direct Internet connections in particular, you should carefully
consider and implement the following:
• Ensure that encryption is enabled.
By
.
• Ensure that you have selected secure passwords with at least 8 characters
and a mixture of upper and lower case and numeric characters.
By
.
• Reserve the admin password for administration use only and use a non-
admin user profile for day-to-day access.
• Use the latest Secure VNC viewer (this has more in-built security than is
available with the Java viewer). To
• Use non-standard
.
• Restrict the range of IP addresses that are allowed to access the CPU IP to
only those that you will need to use. To
.
• Do NOT Force VNC protocol 3.3.
.
• Add a further level of inherent security by restricting access only via modem
or ISDN dialup.
• Ensure that the computer accessing the CPU IP is clean of viruses and
spyware and has up-to-date firewall and anti-virus software loaded that is
appropriately configured.
• Avoid accessing the CPU IP from public computers.
Security can be further improved by using the following suggestions:
• Use a KVM switch with On-Screen-Display driven security access and an auto-
logout (after inactivity) feature to provide a second level of security.
• Place the CPU IP behind a firewall and use port the numbers to route the
VNC network traffic to an internal IP address.
• Review the activity log from time to time to check for unauthorized use.
• Lock your server consoles after they have been used.
A security white paper that gives further details is available upon request from
LINDY.
Ports
In this configuration there should be no constraints on the port numbers
because the CPU IP will probably be the only device at that IP address. Therefore,
maintain the HTTP port as 80 and the VNC port as 5900.
Addressing
When the CPU IP is situated alongside the firewall, it will require a public static IP
address (i.e. one provided by your Internet service provider).
More addressing information:
Discover DHCP-allocated addresses
DNS addressing