The answer is, it depends. It depends on the network design and the technology
used by the load balancer. For example, a round-robin DNS load balancer offers
no security. Sure, one could argue that since you don't expose the host via a
public IP address there is no risk. That's not the case. You might want to read:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1102/1102ws1.html
or if you are a MS shop:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=A101CA7D-6FCD-44BF-8BE1-47F1462DCB24&displaylang=en
http://207.46.196.114/WindowsServer/en/Library/fa6ef832-1aa7-472f-b492-0dd3c60bd46d1033.mspx
----------
---Matthew
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 1/22/2008 at 3:05 PM dan.tesch@comcast.net wrote:
I'm new to a company that has a large number of sites parked on managed
servers at a hosting facility - the servers, firewalls and load balancers
are exclusive to our use but managed by the ISP.
In reviewing our site design I have seen that the VPN between our LAN and
the hosting facility permits all IP traffic in both directions -
effectively making these public facing servers part of our LAN in my
opinion.
For obvious reasons I'm looking to change this. Nobody is lobbying
against the change but a senior developer that was involved in the
original design points out that because of the load balancers in front of
the servers, the world at large is not able to touch the machines and thus
the potential for compromise is limited.
Could I get some comments from this community about how vulnerable or not
this type of setup might be? I'm looking for specific info related to the
load balancers not commentary about the corporate LAN in this situation -
even if the combination of the firewalls and load balancers provide 99.9%
protection I think it is a bad idea and would most likely not pass PCI
scrutiny.
Thanks
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