NetBackup and Veritas Appliances Hardening Guide
- Top recommendations to improve your NetBackup and Veritas appliances security posture
- Introduction
- Keeping all systems and software updated
- Enabling multifactor authentication
- Increasing the appliance security level
- Implementing an immutable data vault
- Securing credentials
- Reducing network exposure
- Enabling encryption
- Enabling catalog protection
- Enabling malware scanning and anomaly detection
- Enabling security observability
- Restricting user access
- Configuring a sign-in banner
- Steps to protect Flex Appliance
- About Flex Appliance hardening
- Managing single sign-on (SSO)
- Managing user authentication with smart cards or digital certificates
- About lockdown mode
- Using network access control
- Using an external certificate
- Forwarding logs
- Creating a NetBackup WORM storage server instance
- Configuring an isolated recovery environment on a WORM storage server
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog on a WORM storage server
- Using a sign-in banner
- Steps to protect NetBackup Appliance
- About NetBackup Appliance hardening
- About single sign-on (SSO) authentication and authorization
- About authentication using smart cards and digital certificates
- Disable user access to the NetBackup appliance operating system
- About Network Access Control
- About data encryption
- FIPS 140-2 conformance for NetBackup Appliance
- About implementing external certificates
- About forwarding logs to an external server
- Creating the appliance login banner
- Steps to protect NetBackup
- About NetBackup hardening
- Configure NetBackup for single sign-on (SSO)
- Configure user authentication with smart cards or digital certificates
- Access codes
- Workflow to configure immutable and indelible data
- Add a configuration for an external CMS server
- Configuring an isolated recovery environment on a NetBackup BYO media server
- About FIPS support in NetBackup
- Installing KMS
- Workflow for external KMS configuration
- Validating KMS credentials
- Configuring KMS credentials
- Configuring KMS
- Creating keys in an external KMS
- Workflow to configure data-in-transit encryption
- Workflow to use external certificates for NetBackup host communication
- About certificate revocation lists for external CA
- Configuring an external certificate for the NetBackup web server
- Configuring the primary server to use an external CA-signed certificate
- Configuring an external certificate for a clustered primary server
- Configuring a NetBackup host (media server, client, or cluster node) to use an external CA-signed certificate after installation
- Configuration options for external CA-signed certificates
- ECA_CERT_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_TRUST_STORE_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_KEY_PASSPHRASEFILE for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_CHECK for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_PATH_SYNC_HOURS for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_REFRESH_HOURS for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_DISABLE_AUTO_ENROLLMENT for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_DR_BKUP_WIN_CERT_STORE for NetBackup servers and clients
- MANAGE_WIN_CERT_STORE_PRIVATE_KEY option for NetBackup primary servers
- Guidelines for managing the primary server NetBackup catalog
- About protecting the MSDP catalog
- How to set up malware scanning
- About backup anomaly detection
- Send audit events to system logs
- Send audit events to log forwarding endpoints
- Display a banner to users when they sign in
About lockdown mode
Flex Appliance lockdown mode offers additional security levels to protect your appliance and data, in addition to the hardened, secure operating environment that comes out of the box.
Lockdown mode provides the following benefits:
It prevents unauthorized access or modification to the underlying operating system (OS). Once lockdown mode is enabled, administrators cannot make changes to the OS or the internal components.
If you need access to the OS for emergency operations, you must contact Veritas Technical Support to obtain a One-Time Password and temporarily unlock the appliance. This functionality prevents unauthorized changes even if a malicious actor gained access to stolen credentials.
It includes the option to create WORM storage instances that prevent your data from being encrypted, modified, or deleted. WORM is the acronym for Write Once Read Many. Any data that is saved on these instances is protected with the following security measures:
Immutability
This protection ensures that the backup image is read-only and cannot be modified, corrupted, or encrypted after backup.
Indelibility
This property protects the backup image from being deleted before it expires. The data is protected from malicious deletion.
Flex Appliance includes the following lockdown modes:
Normal mode
This mode is the default mode of the appliance. Normal mode does not support WORM storage.
Enterprise mode
This mode adds additional access restrictions but retains a level of flexibility. In this mode:
You can create WORM storage instances and also delete them, including any existing data.
Any administrator can delete WORM storage instances if there is no immutable data. However, only the default admin user can delete them if immutable data is present.
When you delete a WORM storage instance as the default admin user, the instance can be running or stopped. When you delete a WORM instance as any other user, the instance must be running so that the system can verify that there is no immutable data present.
To change from enterprise mode to normal mode, you must first delete all WORM storage instances.
Compliance mode
This mode adds the highest level of access restrictions. In this mode:
You can create WORM storage instances. You can delete the instances only if there is no immutable data present.
Any administrator can delete WORM storage instances if there is no immutable data.
When you delete a WORM storage instance, the instance must be running so that the system can verify that there is no immutable data present.
To change from compliance mode to enterprise mode or normal mode, you must first wait for all data on the WORM storage instances to expire and then delete the instances.
In both enterprise mode and compliance mode, storage reset is disabled.
Veritas strongly recommends that you enable enterprise lockdown mode to prevent unauthorized access to the OS, even if you do not plan to create WORM storage instances.
Warning:
Lockdown mode does not block access to the remote management (IPMI) port. Veritas recommends that you set up your network to restrict access and only allow security administrators or the users that manage the physical hardware to use the port.
The appliance must be in lockdown mode before you can create WORM storage instances. See Changing the lockdown mode.
For more information on creating and managing WORM storage instances, see the NetBackup Application Guide for Flex Appliance.