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SSL meeting federal requirements?

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    SSL meeting federal requirements?

    Hello. I am planning on using A5v11 to host a patient portal. For the portal to be compliant, I am told:

    'You can use SSL to meet the encryption requirements, as long as the ciphersuite used for the SSL connection uses FIPS 140-2 compliant algorithms.
    OpenSSL supports FIPS 140-2 compliant algorithms, but it needs to be configured correctly. Just installing OpenSSL does not guarantee the correct algorithms or ciphersuites are being used.'

    Does anyone know whether the OpenSSL used in A5 uses FIPS 140-2 compliant algorithms and cyphersuites, whatever that means?
    Thank you.
    - Peter Wayne

    #2
    Re: SSL meeting federal requirements?

    Peter:

    Nice to see your name again.

    I would think the answer would be yes, since the Alpha team responds so quickly to security concerns. However, being you say "Patient" portal, the consequences are high. I'd certainly think about using v12, since v11 has little or no support from Alpha.

    I think the only way to be sure would be to run a ready test against a site (There's a user named Steve Wood that comes to mind) that is running on the latest build of version 11 web server.

    There are a lot of online tools to test, and you can run a test on existing sites like PayPal.com to see what is returned.

    I, too, am concerned about this as I have an app in mind that relates to students, and protecting information is critical. I am far from an expert, and I mean far, but using older SSL is akin to using older encryption algorythms like SHA-1 or MDA. Everything has to be updated every few years.

    https://cryptoreport.websecurity.sym.../certCheck.jsp

    Please let us know your findings...

    Comment


      #3
      Re: SSL meeting federal requirements?

      The short answer is V11 is not going to be FIPS 140-2 compliant while Alpha Anywhere has the potential to be. There is a bit more to it than that though so I will explain further.

      The V11 Application Server includes both SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0. There is no way to disable these from Alpha, and neither of these are approved under FIPS 140-2. As such, a V11 site will never be FIPS 140-2 compliant regardless of which ciphers you configure it with. It may be possible to compile/find your own OpenSSL libraries that work in V11 to be FIPS compliant, however Alpha does not provide these and cannot guarantee the operation with a third party library that may have certain protocols and ciphers removed. (In other words, we have not tested V11 with an OpenSSL library compiled without SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0 and will not support any functional problems that this may introduce.)

      The Alpha Anywhere Application Server removes SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0 and so has the potential for FIPS compliance. Compliance is also dependent on the ciphers, and these may be configured in the server's settings. Alpha provides a default cipher suite setting that is generally considered to be secure (we do not create the suite, rather we use one specified by generally accepted best practices) while attempting to maintain backwards compatibility with older browsers and operating systems where possible. Backwards compatibility often conflicts with the tightest security and the FIPS 140-2 is not are target when specifying the cipher suite, so it is entirely possible that you will need to change the cipher suite used.

      Another option is the Alpha Anywhere Application Server for IIS. When using this, IIS handles all of the web server duties, including encryption. This eliminates OpenSSL altogether but similarly requires the proper configuration be made for compliance. Here you would be configuring IIS instead of Alpha and OpenSSL.

      Lenny Forziati
      Vice President, Internet Products and Technical Services
      Alpha Software Corporation

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