Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Chapter 18. Keeping Your Server Secure

In This Chapter

• Setting up firewalls

• Creating and using SSL certificates

• Setting up virtual private networks

One aspect of managing clients is using server security to keep clients from compromising the network. Snow Leopard Server comes with tools to prevent snooping, malware, and malicious attacks. In other chapters, I describe password encryption with authentication, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) data encryption, the use of secure certificates, and spam and virus blockers for individual services including file sharing, e-mail, and the Web.

This chapter looks at overall issues, including using the firewall to guard access to the network and using and creating secure certificates for encryption. I end with configuring a virtual private network to give off-site users secure access to the local network. Server Preferences can do some of this: set firewalls, create and import certificates, and set up a virtual private network. I also discuss using Server Admin if you need to go deeper.

Tip

If you're using your server as an Internet gateway with network address translation (NAT), you can use the Gateway Setup Assistant to guide you through the configuration of your firewall and virtual private network, among other things, all at once. First, turn on NAT: in Server Admin, select your server, click Settings, and then click Services. Select the NAT check box and then click the Save button. Second, to get to the Assistant, click the triangle next to your server ...