SecureAdmin

SecureAdmin improves the security of your storage system by making it very difficult for someone to intercept a storage system administrator's password over the network, because the password and all administrative communication are encrypted. SecureAdmin also provides a secure communication channel between a client and the storage system by using one or both of the following protocols—SSH and SSL.

• Secure Shell (SSH) protocol

  SSH provides a secure remote shell and interactive network session. SecureAdmin supports SSH 1.x clients and SSH 2.0 clients.

• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol

  SSL provides secure web access for FilerView and Data ONTAP APIs.

• How the SSH protocol improves security
  SSH improves security by providing a means for a storage system to authenticate the client and by generating a session key that encrypts data sent between the client and storage system. SSH performs public-key encryption using a host key and a server key.
• Ways to manage SSH for SecureAdmin
  SecureAdmin uses options to enable secure sessions using SSH. The options enable you to control password-based authentication and public key authentication, control access to a storage system, and assign the port number to a storage system.
• How the SSL protocol improves security
  Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) improves security by providing a digital certificate that authenticates storage systems and allows encrypted data to pass between the system and a browser. SSL is built into all major browsers; therefore, installing a digital certificate on the storage system enables the SSL capabilities between system and browser.
• Ways to manage SSL for SecureAdmin
  SSL uses a certificate to provide a secure connection between the storage system and a Web browser. Two types of certificates are used—self-signed certificate and certificate-authority-signed certificate.
• Enabling or disabling both protocols used by SecureAdmin
  Data ONTAP allows you to enable or disable SecureAdmin for both SSH and SSL.
• Determining whether SecureAdmin is running
  Data ONTAP displays information that shows whether SecureAdmin is running. The information helps you determine whether administrative transactions between the storage system and a client are being encrypted.