Installing Policy Manager In High-Security Environments - F-SECURE POLICY MANAGER 9.0 Administrator's Manual

Installing Policy Manager in high-security environments

Policy Manager is designed to be used in internal corporate networks mainly for managing F-Secure anti-virus
products, and should not be used over public networks such as the Internet.
Note: When installing Policy Manager in high-security environments, you should make sure that the
administration port (by default port 8080) and the host port (by default port 80) are not visible on the
Internet.
Built-in security features
Policy Manager has built-in security features that ensure detection of changes in the policy domain structure
and policy data. More importantly, it is impossible to deploy unauthorized changes to managed hosts. Both
these features rely on a management key pair that is available to administrators only. These features, based
on strong digital signatures, will in most cases provide the right balance between usability and security in
most antivirus installations, but the following features may require additional configuration in high-security
environments:
• By default, all users can access Policy Manager Server in read-only mode but are only able to view the
management data. This is a convenient way of sharing information to users who are not allowed full
administrative rights. Multiple users can keep a read-only session open simultaneously, monitoring the
system status without affecting other administrators or managed hosts in any way.
• To enable easy migration to new management keys, it is possible to re-sign the policy domain structure
and policy data with a newly generated or previously existing key pair. If this is done accidentally, or
intentionally by an unauthorized user, the authorized user will notice the change when he tries to log in to
Policy Manager the next time. In the worst case, the authorized user needs to recover backups in order
to remove the possible changes made by the unauthorized user. In any case, the policy domain structure
and policy data changes will be detected, and there is no way to distribute the changes to managed hosts
without the correct original key pair.
Both of these features may be undesirable in a high-security environment where even seeing the management
data should be restricted. As an alternative, Policy Manager Console and Policy Manager Server can be
installed on the same machine, and access limited to the localhost. Remote administrator access to Policy
Manager Console can be arranged by using a secure remote desktop product.
Web Reporting in high-security environments
Web Reporting is designed to be used in internal corporate networks for generating graphical reports of, for
example, Client Security virus protection status and alerts. F-Secure does not recommend using Web Reporting
over public networks such as Internet.
An alternative for high-security environments is to limit access to Web Reporting to localhost only during the
installation. After this, only the person who has physical access to the localhost can use Web Reporting.
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