MACROMEDIA FLASH MEDIA SERVER 2-MANAGING FLASH MEDIA..., Manual

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224 Flash Media Server Security
Choosing passwords
When choosing passwords, remember to make them as secure as possible. The following
guidelines can help you create more secure passwords:
■
The minimum length of a password should be 7 characters.
■
Passwords should not contain your user name or any part of it (for example: Jane, Doe,
Jdoe).
■
Passwords should contain three of the following four items: at least one uppercase letter
(A-Z), at least one lowercase letter (a-z), at least one numeric character (0-9), and at least
one non-alphanumeric character shown here:
! _ * # $ % & ; + -
■
Passwords should be changed regularly and none of the last five passwords should be
reused.
Access DLL
Access DLL is a new module in this release of Flash Media Server. This module adds another
layer of security before Flash Media Server accepts connection requests from clients. Access
DLL intercepts and examines each connection request to determine whether Flash Media
Server should accept or reject the request. You can configure the Access DLL module to
control settings of the client connection or to access relevant server statistics such as the
number of connections. The Access DLL module is initialized upon Flash Media Server
startup.
Flash Media Server administrators can deploy the Access DLL module as a programmatic
method to intercept connections to Flash Media Server before the requests reach its JavaScript
layer. The module can be configured to initiate a query of the organization’s database of users
and passwords to determine if a connection should be allowed, and if it is allowed, the
connection is accepted and the database updated with a record of the user's access to Flash
Media Server.
The module’s
getStats
function reveals how many current connections exist and the current
values for the
bytesIn
and
bytesOut
APIs. You can configure Access DLL to reject or accept
users based upon how many users are currently connected to the server and the bandwidth
being currently consumed. The client will poll these values when a connection is attempted. If
the values received are below the defined threshold, then the connection is accepted. If the
values defined for the
bytesIn
and
bytesOut
have been exceeded, the connection is rejected.