Chapter 27. Securing Your GroupWise System via SSL

Every piece of a GroupWise system and a GroupWise messenger system can be secured via SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). SSL allows data to be secured via an industry-recognized protocol for encrypting data between two network hosts.

SSL is used only to encrypt data while it's "on the wire." SSL is not used to encrypt data after it has traversed the network and is on a storage device such as a server or computer hard drive.

GroupWise has always used a proprietary 40-bit encryption scheme. In addition to that, GroupWise not only encrypts the data, but also compresses it using another proprietary scheme. With the advent of government regulations and industry demands, GroupWise supports SSL using 128-bit encryption. Setting up SSL encryption isn't all that difficult, it's just a matter of understanding some underlying concepts really well. You can then apply those concepts in a multitude of areas.

Tip

Using SSL to connect a laptop with a cached mailbox to a post office can be very interesting, because the security of the connection between this client and the PO is as good as many other solutions. In many cases, thanks to SSL you may no longer need to use VPNs to connect your remote or caching clients to your GroupWise environment.