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Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
Security in HCL Informix®
The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
Securing data
Connection security
You can administer the security of the connections to the database server by using authentication and authorization processes.
Limiting denial-of-service flood attacks
Informix® has multiple listener threads (listen_authenticate) to limit denial-of-service (DOS) attacks.

Security
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
- Security in HCL Informix®
  The Informix® Security Guide documents methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects, including how to use the secure-auditing facility of the database server.
  - Securing data
    - HCL Informix® directory security
      utilities and product directories are secure by default.
    - Network data encryption
      Use network encryption to encrypt data transmitted between server and client, and between server and other server.
    - Column-level encryption
      You can use column-level encryption to store sensitive data in an encrypted format. After encrypting sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, only users who can provide a secret password can decrypt the data.
    - Connection security
      You can administer the security of the connections to the database server by using authentication and authorization processes.
      - Authentication mechanisms
        You can configure the Informix® server authentication mechanisms to meet varying requirements, such as different security methods required for local and remote connections, database access by users without operating system accounts on the servers host computer, and non-root installation.
      - Internal users (UNIX™, Linux™)
        The DBSA can grant database access to users that do not authenticate on the OS of the host computer by mapping PAM-authenticated users to OS-level entities or by configuring the server to perform internal authentication.
      - Guest account (Windows™)
        Disable the Windows™ Guest account to prevent anonymous logins.
      - Trusted-context objects and trusted connections
        You can use trusted-context objects and trusted connections to increase system performance and security within a three-tier application model.
      - Pluggable authentication modules (UNIX™ or Linux™)
        A Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) is a well-defined framework for supporting different authentication modules that were originally developed by Sun Microsystems. PAM is supported in both 32- and 64-bit modes on Solaris, Linux™, HP-UX and AIX®.
      - LDAP authentication support on Windows™
      - Authentication module deployment
      - Simple password encryption
        The simple password communication support module (SPWDCSM) provides password encryption.
      - Single sign-on
        Single sign-on is an authentication feature that bypasses the requirement to provide user name and password after a user logs into the client computer's operating system.
      - Securing local connections to a host
        The database server administrator (DBSA) can use the SECURITY_LOCALCONNECTION configuration parameter to set up security checking for local connections with the same host.
      - Limiting denial-of-service flood attacks
        Informix® has multiple listener threads (listen_authenticate) to limit denial-of-service (DOS) attacks.
        LISTEN_TIMEOUT and MAX_INCOMPLETE_CONNECTIONS configuration parameters
        You can use configuration parameters to reduce the risk of a hostile, denial-of-service (DOS) flood attack.
    - Discretionary access control
      Discretionary access control verifies whether the user who is attempting to perform an operation has been granted the required privileges to perform that operation.
    - Label-Based Access Control
      You can use label-based access control (LBAC), an implementation of multi-level security (MLS), to control who has read access and who has write access to individual rows and columns of data.
  - Auditing data security

Limiting denial-of-service flood attacks

Informix® has multiple listener threads (listen_authenticate) to limit denial-of-service (DOS) attacks.

These threads authenticate client requests, while the main listener thread only accepts the incoming requests and forks new threads for authentication.

You can use the MAX_INCOMPLETE_CONNECTIONS configuration parameter to configure the number of the threads authenticating at any point in time.

You can use the LISTEN_TIMEOUT configuration parameter to configure the timeout value for incomplete connections.

DOS attacks can occur when you use external mechanisms such as Telnet to connect to the port reserved for a database server. For example, if you use Telnet to connect to the port reserved for a database server service, but do not send data, and a separate session attempts to connect to the server through an application such as DB-Access, the listener thread is blocked while waiting for information from the Telnet session and the listener thread cannot accept the connection to the application used in the second session. If during the waiting period, an attacker launches a distributed DOS (DDOS) attack in a loop, you can receive a flood attack on the connection leading to poor connection performance.