[tasc] pars coonect published on the internet

[sarge]

I,ve just been informed that the SLT want to publish the pars connect web site to the www. . Anybody doing this ? I can only see problems with expensive solutions.

[Edu-IT]

What sort of problems do you see? It's relatively easy to open up PARS externally.

[FN-GM]

What sort of problems do you see? It's relatively easy to open up PARS externally.

 

Doing it securely is another matter...

[jonathan.lees]

It's an old thread I know but my headteacher has just asked for this. It's a risk and I'm concerned about security breaches. Every day I see reports of webservers being compromised and our teachers aren't overally digilent with their passwords. Beyond using ssl/tls on the webserver what else would you recommend to lock it down?

[sarge]

It Think you can impendent PINs or capita. Tasc said this when I asked £"Access from home is a useful feature for staff and many schools publish Connect to the internet without any issues. We cannot tell you what measures to take to keep the site secure - ultimately this is a decision you need to take a school.

 

It is possible to turn on PINs in PARS, which means staff will receive a PIN number to their email address which they will also need to log in, in addition to their SIMS credentials. Bear in mind that using PINs will increase the amount of time that it takes for staff to log in to PARS while they are onsite as well, which may irritate staff.

".

You could just give access via vpn/remotegateway.

[jonathan.lees]

Thanks Sarge, implemeting pins is an extra layer I guess, wouldn't work internally though as it would definaely irritate staff. I wonder if it's possible for IIS to detect whether they are on an internal ip or external ip and present them with a pin based on that. If not maybe installing a seperate instance of pars connect for external access with pins enabled.

[SpaceInvader83]

What about securing Pars.net with IIS? Client Certificate Mapping Authentication?