One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions 6.8.1 - Administration Guide

Session-handling in HTTP

Communication over HTTP consists of client requests and server responses (also called exchanges). Unlike in other protocols, for example SSH, these request-response pairs do not form a well-defined, continuous connection. Therefore, One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) assumes that an HTTP request-response pair belongs to a specific session if the following points are true:

• The IP address of the client is the same

• The hostname of the target server (not the IP address) is the same

• The username is the same (if the user has performed inband authentication)

• The time elapsed since the last request-response pair between the same client and server is less then the session timeout value (15 minutes by default).

• The first session cookie SPS finds within the request is the same. Note that the cookie must be listed in the Session Cookie Settings option. For details, see Creating and editing protocol-level HTTP settings.

SPS creates a separate audit trail and records the accessed URLs for every session. These are displayed on the Search page. If any of the columns is not visible, click Customize columns....

For technical reasons, in authenticated sessions the login page where the user provides the credentials is not part of the session associated with the username. This means that even if the login page is the first that the user visits, SPS will record two sessions: the first does not include a username, the second one does. These two sessions are visible on the Active Connections page (until the unauthenticated session times out).

Creating and editing protocol-level HTTP settings

HTTP settings determine the parameters of the connection on the protocol level, including timeout value, and so on.

To create a new HTTP settings profile or edit an existing one

1. Navigate to the Settings tab of the HTTP Control menu item and click to create a HTTP setting profile. Enter a name for the profile (for example http_special).

   Figure 189: HTTP Control > Settings — Creating and editing protocol-level HTTP settings

   

2. Click to display the parameters of the profile.

3. Modify the parameters as needed. The following parameters are available:

   • Idle timeout: Timeout value for the session in seconds. To avoid early timeout, set it to a larger value, for example a week (604800 seconds).

     Caution: Determining if a connection is idle is based on the network traffic generated by the connection, not the activity of the user. For example, if an application or the taskbar of a graphical desktop displays the time which is updated every minute, it generates network traffic every minute, negating the effects of timeout values greater than one minute and preventing One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) from closing the connection.

   • Session timeout: Timeout value for the session in seconds.

   • Enable pre channel check: Select this option to evaluate the connection and channel policies before establishing the server-side connection. That way if the connection is not permitted at all, SPS does not establish the server-side connection.

     NOTE:

     This option cannot be disabled.

4. To distinguish the audited HTTP requests and responses based on the session cookies of web applications, click Session Cookie Settings > , and enter the name of the session cookie, for example, PHPSESSID, JSESSIONID, or ASP.NET_SessionId. Note that the names of session cookies are case sensitive.

   Repeat this step to add multiple cookie names. Note that if you list multiple cookie names, SPS will use the first one it finds to assign the requests to a session.

5. To configure TLS security settings on both the Client side and the Server side, proceed to TLS security settings.

   Figure 190: <Protocol> Control > Settings > TLS security settings - configuring TLS security settings

   

   • Cipher strength specifies the cipher string OpenSSL will use. The following settings options are possible:

     • Recommended: this setting only uses ciphers with adequate security level.

     • Custom: this setting allows you to specify the list of ciphers you want to permit SPS to use in the connection. This setting is only recommended in order to ensure compatibility with older systems. For more details on customizing this list, check the 'openssl-ciphers' manual page on your SPS appliance.

       For example: ALL:!aNULL:@STRENGTH

   • Minimum TLS version specifies the minimal TLS version SPS will offer during negotiation. The following settings options are possible:

     • TLS 1.2: this setting will only offer TLS version 1.2 during negotiation. This is the recommended setting.

     • TLS 1.1: this setting will offer TLS version 1.1 and later versions during negotiation.

     • TLS 1.0: this setting will offer TLS version 1.0 and later versions during negotiation.

   NOTE:

   Note that SPS only permits TLS-encrypted connections. SSLv3 is not supported.

6. Click .

7. Select this settings profile in the HTTP settings field of your connections.

ICA-specific settings

The following sections describe configuration settings available only for the ICA protocol. Use the following policies to control who, when, and how can access the ICA connection.

• ICA connections: For details, see Setting up ICA connections.

• Channel Policy: The channel policy determines which ICA channels (for example clipboard, file-sharing, and so on) can be used in the connection, and whether they are audited or not. The different channels may be available only under certain restrictions, as set in the channel policy. For details, see Creating and editing channel policies.

• ICA settings: ICA settings determine the parameters of the connection on the protocol level, including timeout value and display parameters. For details, see Creating and editing protocol-level ICA settings.

• Deployment scenarios: These describe the available One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) deployment scenarios in a Citrix environment. For details, see One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) deployment scenarios in a Citrix environment

Setting up ICA connections

This section focuses on describing the ICA-specific details of connection configuration. For a detailed description on configuring connections, see General connection settings.

Reliable connection is also known as Common Gateway Protocol (CGP). It attempts to reconnect to the server in case of a network failure. To use this feature, enable Reliable and enter the default port in the Port field in the upper right corner.

Enable Act as SOCKS proxy to configure the client to use One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Sessions (SPS) as a SOCKS proxy. If you have enabled this option, you can select Inband destination selection as Target. Enter the IP address or the IP address/Prefix of the brokers (Citrix XML Brokers) used by the client in this connection policy into the Address field. It is also recommended to enable access to the brokers on port 443, as the clients usually try to access the broker using this port first. Disabling port 443 will cause a denied connection to appear on the SPS Search interface for every connection attempt (but the clients will be able to connect the server).