Security planning
This topic gives background information about the methods of maintaining security for the PATROL Agent, lists default ownership and permissions for the PATROL Agent, and tells you how to change the ownership and permissions. This topic contains the following sections:
Access control list
The Access Control List (ACL) controls which users are authorized to connect to a PATROL Agent, in which modes and from which hosts. An agent configuration variable defines the ACL. The ACL configuration variable is described in Defining-Access-Control-Lists. For information about setting up an ACL, see Controlling access to the Agent.
Security levels
Allows you to install one of the five security-level policies to secure the data flow. For more information, see Chapter 1 of PATROL Security User Guide.
PATROL access control
You can control the access by setting the definitions in patrol.conf file. For more information, see Securing-PATROL-Agent-from-the-pconfig-clients.
Application accounts
You can instruct the PATROL Agent to use separate accounts for individual applications and instances. For more information about how to specify which accounts are used for which commands, see Establishing-accounts-and-ports.
User accounts
The default account for the PATROL Agent to run commands is specified by the defaultAccount variable in the agent configuration file. The PATROL Agent cannot run application discovery and parameters properly without a valid user name. For more information, see Default-ownership-and-permissions-for-files.
Firewall requirements
If your environment is protected by firewalls, you may have to modify the firewall configuration to accommodate the PATROL. For information about installing and configuring a PATROL Agent in an environment with firewalls, see Installing-PATROL-Agents.
Ownership and permissions
The PATROL_HOME/log and PATROL_HOME/config directories are created when the PATROL Agent process is run for the first time. At that time, the ownership and permissions of the PATROL Agent log and configuration directories are set. If the PATROL_ADMIN environment variable is set, it specifies the user who owns the newly created log and configuration files. If the PATROL_ADMIN environment variable is not set, the PATROL default account user owns all the files.
For more information, see Default-ownership-and-permissions-for-files.
The default ownership and permissions of the PATROL Agent log and configuration directories are set according to the following table:
Directories for ownership and permissions of agent log
The following table shows the default ownership and permissions of the log and configuration files:
Default owner and permissions of log and configuration files
Enhanced encryption mechanism
PATROL Agents use the Advanced Encryption Standard with Galois/Counter Mode (AES-GCM) to decrypt the BMC Helix Operations Management policy passwords.