Chapter 8: Maintaining Security

Chapter 8

Maintaining Security

About This Chapter

In this chapter, you ll learn how to control access to your Web application using the three techniques that Microsoft ASP.NET provides for identifying users and allowing them to have access to your application. You ll also learn how to secure data transmitted across the Internet so that others can t read it.

This chapter does not provide a comprehensive guide to server or network security. That is truly a broad subject involving a great deal of conceptual and system-specific information. What this chapter does provide is a practical guide to implementing Web application security through ASP.NET.

Before You Begin

To complete the lessons in this chapter, you must:

• Have access to two computers in a Microsoft Windows network. This can be a simple workgroup-based network such as you might set up at home, but a domain-based network is best.

• Have Administrator privileges on a computer that functions as a server on the network.

If you don t have access to a Windows network, you can perform most of the tasks in this chapter using a single computer and running the applications locally, as you do in Microsoft Visual Studio s Debug mode. However, you will not be able to easily test authentication of multiple users.