This article was written as an attempt to share the experience of installing the InterSystems Caché DBMS for production environment.
We all know that the development configuration of a DBMS is very different from real-life conditions.
As a rule, development is carried out in “hothouse conditions” with a bare minimum of security measures, but when we publish our project online, we must ensure its reliable and uninterrupted operation in a very aggressive environment.

The %CSP.Login class is the utility class provided by InterSystems IRIS to do custom login pages. If you want to control your IRIS application authentication UI, you must extend %CSP.Login and override some methods according to your needs. This article is going to detail those methods and what you can do with them. In addition to that, you will get an explanation of the delegated authentication mechanism provided by ZAUTHENTICATE.mac routine.

Hi Community,

Did you know about OWASP and Top Ten Web Application security risks to your Web API or Web Apps?

OWASP is a community foundation created to help us to improve the security of web apps/web APIs. OWASP do the web apps more secure through its community-led open source software projects, hundreds of chapters worldwide, tens of thousands of members, and by hosting local and global conferences.

Presenter: Dan Kutac
Task: Use a common login identity and a central mechanism of authentication across environments from multiple entities
Approach: Provide examples and code samples of an application environment using OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0

Description: In this session we will demonstrate an application environment using OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0. Hear how this is done and what options you have; and yes, you get to keep the code.

Problem: How to use a a common login identity (e.g. Facebook credentials) and a central mechanism of authorization cross environments from multiple entities.

Solution: Create awareness and interest in using OAuth 2.0

Content related to this session, including slides, video and additional learning content can be found here.

Apart from the database server itself, the standard bundle of the Caché DBMS includes DeepSee, a real-time business intelligence tool. DeepSee is the quickest and the simplest way of adding OLAP functionality to your Caché application.

Another standard component is an Audit subsystem with a web interface, which has the options for expanding with your own event types and an API for using in an application code.

Below is a small example of the joint use of these subsystems that answers the following questions: who did what and when in an information system?

You have read about OAuth2 / OpenID Connect but you don't know how to use it? Have you ever needed to implement Single Sign-On (SSO) or secure web services based on tokens? Did you have to add authentication / authorization to your web applications or services and you didn't know how to start?

I was recently asked whether we have a function to convert LDAP date time stamps into $HOROLOG format or other formats and the answer is not at the moment, but there is a simple method to do the conversion.

Let us look at the facts and figures involved...

1) Active Directory's (AD) date 0 (zero) is 1601-01-01 00:00:00.000 or January 1st, 1601 at midnight (00:00:00)

2) AD timestamps are calculated as the number of 100 nanosecond intervals from date 0

3) 864000000000 is the number of 100 nanosecond intervals per day

Anakin Skywalker challenged the high ground and has been terribly injured on Mustafar.

Hi guys,

Couple days ago, a customer approached me with the wish to enhance their existing legacy application, that uses SOAP (Web)Services so it shares the same authorization with their new application API based on REST. As their new application uses OAuth2, the challenge was clear; how to pass access token with SOAP request to the server.

After spending some time on Google, it turned out, that one of possible ways of doing so was adding an extra header element to the SOAP envelope and then making sure the WebService implementation does what is needed to validate the access token.

At the end of this year support for OpenSSL 1.0.1 will end. InterSystems has started the process to move to OpenSSL 1.0.2 and use the 1/28/2016 release (1.0.2f) for verification and product inclusion. I will update this post once InterSystems decided which versions will receive support for OpenSSL 1.0.2.

Hi,

I recently needed to setup an SSL/TLS configuration in IRIS that supported mutual authentication (where the server IRIS is establish a connection to is verified, and, where IRIS is in turn verified by the remote host). After a bit of research and getting it done, I thought it worthwhile to just go over the process I went through in order to potential help others, and save you some time .

How can you allow computers to trust one another in your absence while maintaining security and privacy?

“A Dry Martini”, he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953

OAuth helps to separate services with user credentials from “working” databases, both physically and geographically. It thereby strengthens the protection of identification data and, if necessary, helps you comply with the requirements of countries' data protection laws.

With OAuth, you can provide the user with the ability to work safely from multiple devices at once, while "exposing" personal data to various services and applications as little as possible. You can also avoid taking on "excess" data about users of your services (i.e. you can process data in a depersonalized form).

Presenter: Andreas Dieckow
Task: Securely store sensitive information
Approach: Give examples of data-at-rest encryption and data element encryption

Description: In this session, InterSystems will showcase how to use API calls to programmatically do everything using your own scripts. This approach is highly effective if you have recipe based settings and configurations that you would like to roll out in a controlled and fast fashion.

Problem: Implement Security relevant information correctly and how. Examples are Credit Card information, Sensitive information (e.g. SSN, Classified Information)

Solution: Data-at-rest encryption and data element encryption

Content related to this session, including slides, video and additional learning content can be found here.

Introduction

Nowadays, there is a lot of applications that are using Open Authorization framework (OAuth) to access resources from all kinds of services in a secure, reliable and efficient manner. InterSystems IRIS is already compatible with OAuth 2.0 framework, in fact, there is a great article in the community regarding OAuth 2.0 and InterSystems IRIS in the following link here.