- Flow of data
There are several different interactions that occur between the components of the BigFix Inventory infrastructure and between the user and tool.
- Security configuration scenarios
Check what security options need to be enabled on the BigFix server and the BigFix Inventory server to achieve each of the supported security scenarios.
- Configuring database connection encryption
You can encrypt the connection between BigFix Inventory server and the BigFix Inventory database. Encryption is established between BigFix Inventory server and the database engine using a JDBC driver. You can encrypt the connection while upgrading the server.
- Configuring secure communication
To ensure secure communication, BigFix Inventory uses public key cryptography, which is based on algorithms that use two separate keys, a private key and a public key. This key pair is used to encrypt and decrypt communication
- Assuring compliance with federal encryption standards
You can configure BigFix Inventory to be compliant with the Federal Information Processing Standard requirements that are related to encryption.
- Authenticating users with LDAP
BigFix Inventory supports authentication through a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server. To use this feature, you must configure the BigFix Inventory server.
- Configuring and enabling single sign-on (SSO)
Available from 9.2.1. You can now use the two-factor authentication and use SSO to log on to BigFix Inventory and maintain login consistency with other applications in the enterprise. You can configure BigFix Inventory to use two-factor authentication with single sign-on based either on the exchange of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) token and Microsoft™ Active Directory Federation Services as Identity Provider or you can use the IBM Lightweight Third-Party Authentication (LTPA) technology and IBM Security Access Manager for Web as the authentication service.
- Configuring passwords and encryption mechanisms
To improve the application security, define a security policy for user passwords. You can also configure passwords and encryption mechanisms for the keystore in which the passwords are stored, and the BigFix Inventory database.
- Configuring user account lockout
Available from 9.2.8. By default, user account is locked for 5 minutes after the user attempts to log in to
BigFix Inventory more than 10 times within 5 minutes. You can change the default settings or disable the user account lockout.
- Configuring VM Manager tool to accept trusted VM manager certificates
By default, the VM Manager tool accepts all VM manager certificates regardless of whether they are trusted or not. You can change the default behavior to ensure that only trusted certificates are accepted by the VM Manager tool.
- Relays
Relays lighten both upstream and downstream burdens on the server. Rather than communicating directly with a server, clients can instead be instructed to communicate with designated relays, considerably reducing both server load and client and server network traffic.
