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Placing the MC5-IP alongside the firewall
MC5-IP is built from the ground-up to be secure. It employs a sophisticated
128bit public/private key system that has been rigorously analysed and found
to be highly secure (a security white paper is available upon request). Therefore,
you can position the MC5-IP alongside the firewall and control hosts that are
also IP connected within the local network.
IMPORTANT: If you make the MC5-IP accessible from the public Internet or from
a modem, care should be taken to ensure that the maximum security available
is activated. You are strongly advised to enable encryption and use a strong
password. Security may be further improved by restricting client IP addresses,
using a non-standard port number for access or limiting remote access to dial up
connections only.
Ensuring sufficient security
The security capabilities offered by the MC5-IP are only truly effective when they
are correctly used. An open or weak password or unencrypted link can cause
security loopholes and opportunities for potential intruders. For network links
in general and direct Internet connections in particular, you should carefully
consider and implement the following:
• Ensure that encryption is enabled.
By
standard configuration menu
or by
configuration page via viewer
.
• Ensure that you have selected secure passwords with at least 8 characters
and a mixture of upper and lower case and numeric characters.
By
configuration page via viewer
.
• Reserve the admin password for administration use only and use a non-
admin user profile for day-to-day access.
• Use the latest Secure VNC viewer (this has more in-built security than is
available with the Java viewer). To
download the viewer
.
• Use non-standard
port numbers
.
• Restrict the range of IP addresses that are allowed to access the MC5-IP to
only those that you will need to use. To
restrict IP access
.
• Do NOT Force VNC protocol 3.3.
Configuration page via viewer
.
• Add a further level of inherent security by restricting access only via modem
or ISDN dialup.
• Ensure that the computer accessing the MC5-IP is clean of viruses and
spyware and has up-to-date firewall and anti-virus software loaded that is
appropriately configured.
• Avoid accessing the MC5-IP from public computers.
Security can be further improved by using the following suggestions:
• Place the MC5-IP behind a firewall and use the port numbers to route the
VNC network traffic to an internal IP address.
• Review the activity log from time to time to check for unauthorised use.
• Lock your server consoles after they have been used.
A security white paper that gives further details is available upon request.
Ports
In this configuration there should be no constraints on the port numbers
because the MC5-IP will probably be the only device at that IP address.
Therefore, maintain the HTTP port as 80 and the VNC port as 5900.
Addressing
When the MC5-IP is situated alongside the firewall, it will require a public static
IP address (i.e. one provided by your Internet service provider).
More addressing information:
Discover DHCP-allocated addresses
DNS addressing
