Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: Sources for Extranet Designs?
From: "Bob Alberti" <alberti () sanction net>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 14:08:54 -0600
One thing I always wonder about in Extranet designs: how liable are you (the host of the Extranet) if two of your Extranet customers are competitors? If Customer A can hack your Extranet to, for instance, inspect Customer B's orders, or even to hack Customer B's network, how liable are you for not providing a more secure Extranet environment? Its one thing to protect the host organization from Extranet clients: its another entirely to protect clients from each other. -----Original Message----- From: firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com [mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com]On Behalf Of Wes Noonan Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 1:31 PM To: 'Baumann, Sean C.'; 'R. DuFresne' Cc: 'Paul Robertson'; firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] Sources for Extranet Designs?
1.) If you say you should never allow access to resources on your protected or internal network, how do you handle giving access to services that reside on machines that cannot be duplicated (i.e. expensive mainframes)?
There are a couple of approaches that I can think of off hand. Approach 1 is to design the services with extranet connections in mind. Simply put, maybe the mainframe isn't the right place to house that resource. This is probably not the answer that you want to hear though. Approach 2 is to accept that you have a business limitation that is going to force you to implement a less than ideal security solution. At that point, you mitigate it. What precise ports need to be opened from the extranet to the internal resource and grant *only* that access. If they need SQL access but not NFS access then make sure that your firewall only permits SQL traffic to pass between the two networks. Things like that.
2.) Do most companies require routable address on their extranet? Currently we use RFC1918 address for our extranet, but we see that this will become a problem in the future as we add partners.
Depends. Assuming that you are going to be using firewalls and advertising your internal resources as something else (through the use of NAT, etc.) then you can do that and make the routable addresses what the extranet partners think they are going to connect with. That being said, you can pretty much pick any RFC1918 address space at that point and use it in a similar fashion. The obvious alternative is that someone will need to change their address space. More detailed design you will probably have to pay me for. :-) One thing that this scenario really graphically depicts is why separation of resources is such a valuable objective. Sure, it sounds really nice to have all your stuff running on a mainframe running Linux hosts but these are the kinds of security problems you will then run into. (feel free to expand this statement as you see fit - i.e. integrated firewall/ids/content filter/spam control/virus scanning or separate switches vs. VLANs). HTH Wes Noonan mailinglists () wjnconsulting com http://www.wjnconsulting.com Hardening Network Infrastructure - A concise how to guide Available Spring 2004 Order at http://tinyurl.com/2nof4 _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs?, (continued)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Paul Robertson (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? R. DuFresne (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Marcus J. Ranum (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Don Parker (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Behm, Jeffrey L. (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Frederick M Avolio (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Baumann, Sean C. (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Bob Alberti (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Daniel Linder (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Paul Robertson (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Marcus J. Ranum (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Marcus J. Ranum (Feb 23)
- Re: Sources for Extranet Designs? Dragos Ruiu (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Wes Noonan (Feb 23)
- RE: Sources for Extranet Designs? Frederick M Avolio (Feb 23)