[RussH]

I've been struggling with this one for a while - I don't want to run CATS with a public career portal on the same server. For security reasons, I don't want my key servers exposed to the web. If there was ever a vulnerability for CATS, or any aspect of that website - then it could compromise the core information that underpins the business.

Therefore- how to use the CATS front-end on a server separate from the backend? I'm not keen on using an I-frame either (wouldn't provide any additional security anyway)

I see there are some options within the CATS config file which suggest this is possible - does anyone have experience of trying this?

Otherwise, The only immediate option I can see is using the SQL Replication feature (or SQLSync http://www.linux.com/feature/134127 ) to keep the two servers replicating.

Ideas?

[skwdenyer]

The old-fashioned way to do this in financial services was to physically sit the 2 servers next to each other. One is public-facing, one internal-only, and no network connection exists between the 2. However a serial cable is run between the 2 servers, and a simple "listen" application written on the web server which listens for requests from the internal server, either to "put" data or to "get" data from the web server. Since the internal server does not have a "listen" app, only a "push/pull" app, even a complete comrpomise of the web server cannot result in an attacker gaining access to the internal server.

For our part, we used MySQL replication with 0.7.x to keep the web server and internal server in-sync. However since our model didn't need a portal in the end, we didn't take it any further than proving it worked.