Saturday, February 25, 2012

Looking for input on SQL 2005 and IIS Security

I am just looking for feedback and maybe pointers for research regarding securing SQL 2005 for IIS access. I am currently working on a project for building a new retail website and our sysadm guys have some concerns regarding exposing our SQL box to the DMZ via direct connections to the IIS box. Now we have not completely come to a conclusion of saying that it is not possible, but we are very concerned due to recent credit card and customer data problems in the industry.

So far we have mainly talked about just exposing web services(limiting the exposure of data that can be retrieved) on an internal IIS box that would be called allowed to be accessed from only the IIS box in the DMZ using User Accounts and Client SSL Certs. What I am most concerned about is the performance of this design. I would like to try and provide a connection to the SQL box directly for the devs, but I am not sure what the best practice would be for securing this connection through the firewall and also monitoring it in case our DMZ IIS box gets owned.

Any input or direction to resources would be much appreciated. I have read quite a few papers so far and just want to get feedback on architectures and designs.

Thanks in advance.

Options include: using IPSEC (or SSL) to control the connection between the IIS box and SQL Server (and Developers). Only 'approved' IP addresses would be allowed to connect to SQL Server. That protects SQL Server from being directly attacked, but not from attack from the IIS box.

Using IIS's capability to use Application Pools, you can further restrict access to SQL Server through the Application.

Here are some resources that might be useful:

Web Applications -Connect to SQL Server
Configuring an ASP.NET 2.0 Application to Work with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005
http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=395
How To: Create a Service Account for an ASP.NET 2.0 Application
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998297.aspx
How To: Connect to SQL Server Using Windows Authentication in ASP.NET 2.0
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998300.aspx

No comments:

Post a Comment