OWA and Risk Assesment

[<kronos () datastreamcowboys net>]

Having delt with Exchange the OWA portion can be a nightmare to lockdown. I 
have to admitt when my boss decided to go with Citrix and Win RDP my life 
got simpler with this issue, Because it ment i only had to have Win RDP and 
ICA ports open. I wouldnt want to firewall a OWA set up with a IPtables or 
Netfilter set up. The Checkpoint and the like is the way to go. 

As for the person who wants in and knows what hes doing this is where risk 
assessment comes in. If youre a one man shop just selling stuff you dont 
have the risk of someone wanting your data compared to if you are a R&D lab 
for a Fourtune 100 company that just developed the next fad. With most 
security weather it is encryption or firewall people make mistakes. Look at 
Encryption as a deadbolt lock on your front door of your house. The typical 
dead bolt has 50 tumblers. This lock is useless if the intruders use a 
chainsaw and cut a hole in your wall (which happened a few years ago in 
California). Just because you have the biggest baddest security tool on the 
market, a minor misconfiguration will have you looking for a new job, with 
out a good reference. Also look at the life of your data. If it would be 
detramental if it got out today but inconsequential if it does next week, 
act according.

Besides risk do research.. Believe 10% of the venders and 50% of 
the "hackers". Go to the "hacker sites" and see what tools they have. If 
they have a tool for breaking a specific protocol that ups the risk. 
Another good reason to check out these is to see what may be run aginst 
your firewall. I dont believe any manufactures claims right away. Without 
testing, using the tools from "hacker sites" because these are the things 
that are going to be run aginst your network.

sorry for the rant... 

Adam Graham
Datastreamcowboys.net

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