I test drove a beta version of the iGate in our Real-World Labs® in Green Bay, Wis. My previous experience with Rainbow's NetSwift 2012 SSL Accelerator (see sneak preview, "Rainbow Scores a SSLam Dunk with NetSwift2012") made setting up the appliance a breeze, though the much improved Web-based GUI and addition of wizards should guide the uninitiated through the process with little consternation.
The appliance supports three physical network configuration options: in-line, IP mode and one-arm (see screen, above). Multiple domains and certificates are also supported. After specifying the IP address of the unit and the virtual IP address--the public address clients will use to access the Web server--I added a single back-end Web server. Multiple back-end Web servers can be supported with traditional load-balancing algorithms to provide high availability.
Next, I started up the ACM and set up resources and users. The ACM is a fairly simple, Java-based application. It offers management of users and resources, configuration of access control mechanisms as well as the backup and restoration of the appliance configuration files. It also can manage multiple iGate appliances. I connected to the appliance, and its configuration was autoloaded into the ACM.
I configured five users (user1 through user5) and created two groups: "Even users" and "Odd users." I then added users to each group. User configuration allows individual settings for authentication and includes options for token only, password only, or token and password. Passwords must be set with an expiration date. I'd like to see a "number of uses" feature also allowed for special circumstances. There are occasions you want to grant one-time access, such as when downloading a file. As handing out a costly token for one use doesn't make good business sense, this option would be an attractive one.
Once the users are configured, tokens are made on a batch or an individual basis. Selecting all the users and choosing to process them in batch mode brings up a dialog with the list of users to be processed and instructions. Pop a key in, and the application senses the insertion and writes the appropriate token to the key. When it finishes, pop the key out, and the user is removed from the list. Although this is a tedious task, processing of this magnitude should need to be performed only once.
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