An Overview on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) With IIS, you can further secure websites by using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology. SSL was developed by Netscape Communications, and enables secure communication over the Internet. SSL operates at the transport layer of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite, and uses public key cryptography to establish a secure SSL session between a Web server and client. A few features provided by SSL include authentication, message integrity, and data confidentiality through encryption. To utilize SSL in IIS, the Web server Read More

Authenticating users in IIS is one of the initial steps in securing IIS. When a user attempts to access a website or an FTP site on an IIS machine, authentication is the process that verifies whether the user can indeed access the site. Authentication and permissions are closely coupled. After a user is authenticated, NTFS permissions determine whether the user can access folders and files and Web permissions indicate whether a Web or FTP client can read the website’s home or virtual directory. The authentication methods that authenticate users in Read More

An Introduction to Internet Information Services (IIS) Microsoft's integrated Web server, Internet Information Services (IIS) enables you to create and manage Web sites within your organization. It allows you to share and distribute information over the Internet or intranet. With Windows 2000 came Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 which was basically the fastest Web server at the time when Windows 2000 Server was introduced. IIS 5.0 was fully integrated with the Active Directory directory service. Because of this integration, and the additional features and enhancements introduced with IIS 5.0 you Read More

IIS (Internet Information Services) is an easy to use web server from Microsoft. It is not installed on Windows XP Professional by default. However, it is installed when the user upgrades from Windows NT or Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro. IIS can be installed as follows: Click Start, click Control Panel, and double-click Add/Remove Programs. The Add/Remove Programs application starts. In the left column of the Add/Remove Programs dialog box, click Add/Remove Windows Components. When the Windows Components Wizard appears, click Next. In the Windows Components list, select IIS. Read More

IIS Administration Tools and Methods. The administration methods and management tools which you can use to administer IIS are listed below: Microsoft Management Console (MMC) tools under the Administrative Tools Menu. The primary MMC used to administer IIS is the IIS Manager (see below). You can also use the Computer Management console to perform administration tasks for IIS. The Computer Management console can be opened from the Administrative Tools Menu. To access the Internet Information Services (IIS) node in the Computer Management console, expand the Services And Applications node in Read More

Using SSL to Encrypt LDAP and Global Catalog Queries While Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates are mainly installed on IIS machines to encrypt traffic between a Web server and client, you can also use SSL certificates to secure the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) protocol. LDAP is used in Active Directory environments by applications that need to query domain controllers for information stored in Active Directory. Because LDAP is also utilized to query for sensitive or Active Directory information such as user names, and network service locations; it is easy Read More