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Scan your portal for security best practices

Portal for ArcGIS comes with a Python script tool, portalScan.py, that scans for some common security issues. The tool checks for problems based on some of the best practices for configuring a secure environment for your portal. It analyzes six criteria or configuration properties and divides them into three severity levels: Critical, Important, and Recommended. The descriptions of these criteria are as follows:

IDSeverityPropertyDescription

PS01

Critical

Proxy restrictions

Determines if the portal proxy capability is restricted. By default, the portal proxy server is open to any URL. To mitigate against potential Denial of Service (DoS) or Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attacks, it's strongly recommended that you restrict the portal's proxy capability to approved web addresses.

PS02

Critical

Token requests

Determines if generate token requests with credentials in the query parameter are supported. If supported, when generating tokens, a user's credentials could be provided as part of the URL and may be exposed through browser history or in network logs. This should be disabled unless required by other applications.

PS03

Important

Portal services directory

Determines if the portal services directory is accessible through a web browser. This should be disabled to reduce the chances that your portal items, services, web maps, groups, and other resources can be browsed, found in a web search, or queried through HTML forms.

PS04

Important

Secure communication

Determines if the portal communicates through HTTPS only. To prevent the interception of any communication within the portal, it's recommended that you configure your portal and the web server hosting the Web Adaptor to enforce SSL.

PS05

Recommended

Built-in account sign-up

Determines if users can click the Create An Account button on the portal sign-up page to create a built-in portal account. If you're using enterprise accounts or you want to create all accounts manually, disable this option.

PS06

Recommended

Anonymous access

Determines if anonymous access is allowed. To prevent any user from accessing content without first providing credentials to the portal, it's recommended that you configure your portal to disable anonymous access.

The portalScan.py script is located in the <Portal for ArcGIS installation location>\tools\security directory. Run the script from the command line or shell. You have the option to specify one or more parameters when running the script.

portalScan.py parameters

ParameterDescription

-n

The fully-qualified domain name of the machine where Portal is installed (i.e.: gisportal.domain.com). The default is the hostname of the machine where the script is run.

-u

The username of an administrator account.

-p

The password of an administrator account.

-o

The directory where the security scan report will be saved. The default directory is the same folder where you run the script.

-t

A token can be generated and used in place of the username and password. When generating a token, the fully-qualified domain name of the Portal being scanned should be input in the 'Webapp URL' field. When a token is provided, it overrides any username or password that is provided.

-h or -?

Outputs a listing of the parameters that can be specified when running the script.

Example: python portalScan.py -n portal.domain.com -u admin -p my.password -o C:\Temp

If the portalScan.py script is run without specifying any parameters, you will be prompted to enter them manually or select the default value. If you wish to use a token, it must be provided as a parameter when running the script.

The scan generates a report in HTML format that lists any of the above issues that were found in the specified portal.

By default, the report is saved in the same folder where you run the script and is named portalScanReport_[hostname]_[date].html.


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  1. portalScan.py parameters