WatchGuard Technologies SSL VPN Configuring Secure Certificate Management, Authentication Support

Planning for Security with the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway

When an Firebox SSL VPN Gateway is deployed in the secure network, the Secure Access Client or kiosk client connections must traverse the firewall to connect to the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway. By default, both of these clients use the SSL protocol on port 443 to establish this connection. To support this con- nectivity, you must open port 443 on the firewall.

Note

You can change the port on which clients connect to the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway by altering the port setting in the Administration Tool. This port setting is discussed in “Configuring TCP/IP Settings Using Network Cables”.

Planning for Security with the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway

When planning any type of Firebox SSL VPN Gateway deployment, there are basic security issues associ- ated with certificates, authentication, and authorization that you should understand.

Configuring Secure Certificate Management

By default, the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway includes a self-signed SSL server certificate that enables it to complete SSL handshakes. Self-signed certificates are adequate for testing or sample deployments, but are not recommended for production environments.

Before you deploy the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway in a production environment, WatchGuard recom- mends that you request and receive a signed SSL server certificate from a known Certificate Authority and upload it to the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway.

If you deploy the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway in any environment where the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway must operate as the client in an SSL handshake (initiate encrypted connections with another server), you must also install a trusted root certificate on the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway. For more information about root certificates, see “Installing Root Certificates on the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway” on page 112. For more information about certificates, see “Creating and Installing Secure Certificates” on page 109.

Authentication Support

You can configure the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway to authenticate users and control the level of access (or authorization) that users have to the network resources on the internal network.

Before deploying the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway, your network environment should have the corporate directories and authentication servers in place to support one of these authentication types:

•LDAP

•RADIUS

•RSA SecurID

•NTLM

•Secure Computing SafeWord products

If your environment supports none of the authentication types listed above, or you have a small popula- tion of remote users, you can create a list of local users on the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway and configure the Firebox SSL VPN Gateway to authenticate users against this local list. With this configuration, it is not necessary to maintain user accounts in a separate, external directory.

For more information about authentication and authorization, see “Configuring Authentication and Authorization” on page 61.

Administration Guide 19