Security in Privileged Remote Access on-prem

What is security in the B Series Appliance?

Security in the BeyondTrust Appliance B Series encompasses a range of features and integrations designed to protect remote access sessions while maintaining productivity. The B Series Appliance provides secure remote access to computers over the internet or local networks, offering exceptional performance, reliability, ease-of-use, and scalability. BeyondTrust Secure Remote Access ensures that users can view and control systems remotely, as if physically present, through a solution optimized for secure remote access.

How is it useful to my organization?

Security in the B Series Appliance safeguards remote access sessions by integrating with external user directories, such as LDAP, for secure user management and by preventing sensitive data from being routed outside the organization. Logging is performed directly on the B Series Appliance, enabling organizations to review all endpoint and user interactions, including video playback of desktop screen activity. Extensive auditing and recording help organizations maintain compliance and accountability.

Secure Remote Access also supports multiple operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux distributions, and mobile platforms, allowing secure control of laptops, desktops, servers, kiosks, point-of-sale systems, smartphones, and network devices. The solution works seamlessly over internal and extended networks or as an internet-accessible tool, mediating connections between users and remote systems while enabling chat sessions, file transfers, and access to system information and diagnostics.

By integrating with leading systems management and identity management solutions, and through its robust API, Secure Remote Access supports deeper customization. Managers can create teams, customize queues, and generate reports on all session activity, ensuring secure operations across diverse environments.

Architecture

To make secure remote access possible, the BeyondTrust Secure Remote Access architecture places the B Series Appliance as the focal point of all communications. The B Series Appliance provides interface using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for unauthenticated services, Secure HTTP (HTTPS) for authenticated services, and direct client connections accepted over a proprietary, BeyondTrust-defined protocol.

The B Series Appliance is comprised of two main components. The first, called Base, is made up of the firmware that provides system-level configuration of a B Series Appliance. Settings such as IP addresses and security certificate configurations are all configured via the Base firmware, which is accessed via the /appliance web interface.

The software used for site-level configuration, accessed via the /login web interface, makes up the second functional component. The user configuration and session options take place behind the /login page, and you can download the console, endpoint client, Jump Clients, Jumpoints, and security provider connection agents from there. Sessions always occur through the B Series Appliance, and since the connections are outbound from the clients to the B Series Appliance using well known ports, the application can communicate without local firewall changes.

Validation

To ensure the security and value of our product, BeyondTrust incorporates vulnerability scanning in our software testing process. We track the results of vulnerability scans performed prior to a software release and prioritize resolution based on severity and criticality of any issues uncovered. Should a critical or high-risk vulnerability surface after a software release, a subsequent maintenance release addresses the vulnerability. Updated maintenance versions are distributed to our customers via the update manager interface within the Secure Remote Access administrative interface. When necessary, BeyondTrust Technical Support contacts customers directly, describing special procedures to follow to obtain an updated maintenance version.

In addition to internal scanning procedures, BeyondTrust contracts with third-parties for a source code level review as well as penetration testing. The source code review conducted essentially provides validation from a third party that coding best practices are followed and that proper controls are in place to protect against known vulnerabilities. A penetration test is conducted to confirm the findings.

Authentication

Secure Remote Access can be provisioned for locally defined user Secure Remote Access accounts or can be integrated into existing authentication sources. For instance, a commonly integrated authentication source is Microsoft Active Directory. When using a directory such as this, all authentication follows the existing controls and processes in place for safeguarding user accounts.

Additional security providers are available that allow for user authentication using Kerberos or SAML (for single sign-on) or using RADIUS (for multi-factor authentication). Each of these providers can be configured to use LDAP groups to set the permissions for the user, allowing you to map existing LDAP groups to teams in Secure Remote Access.

There are a large number of granular permissions that can be granted to users. These permissions determine which features in Secure Remote Access a user has access to.

Credential management

BeyondTrust Secure Remote Access can be integrated with an Endpoint Credential Manager (ECM) to improve password security for privileged users and vendors.

An ECM functions as the middleware for communication, and the ECM can be used to integrate Secure Remote Access with password vaults.

Credential injection is a built-in feature of Secure Remote Access. It allows administrators and privileged users to seamlessly inject credentials into systems without exposing plain text passwords, and this feature can also be used with third-party vault tools.

Credential management with BeyondTrust Vault

BeyondTrust Vault is a credential store that exists on the B Series Appliance, enabling discovery of and access to privileged credentials. You can manually add privileged credentials, or you can use the built-in discovery tool to scan and import Active Directory and local accounts into BeyondTrust Vault.

BeyondTrust Vault fits seamlessly with service desk workflow because it is integrated directly with the Secure Remote Access solution. Technicians do not have to learn to use another tool or even exit Secure Remote Access to retrieve passwords. With just one click in the BeyondTrust console, users can select the correct credential from the dropdown and log directly in to a remote system - without ever having to know or even see the actual password.

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For information about the BeyondTrust Vault credential management solution, see Vault FAQs.

Encryption and ports

BeyondTrust Secure Remote Access can be configured such that it enforces the use of SSL for every connection made to the B Series Appliance. Secure Remote Access requires that the SSL certificate being used to encrypt the transport is valid.

Secure Remote Access can natively generate certificate signing requests. It also supports importing certificates generated off the B Series Appliance. Configuration options also are available to disable the use of SSLv3, TLSv1, and/or TLSv1.1. BeyondTrust always has TLSv1.2 enabled to ensure proper operation of the B Series Appliance. Available cipher suites can be enabled or disabled and reordered as needed to meet the needs of your organization.

The BeyondTrust software itself is uniquely built for each customer. As part of the build, an encrypted license file is generated that contains the site Domain Name System (DNS) name and the SSL certificate, which is used by the respective Secure Remote Access client to validate the connection that is made to the B Series Appliance.

The chart below highlights the required ports and the optional ports. Note that there is minimal port exposure of the B Series Appliance. This drastically reduces the potential exposed attack surface of the B Series Appliance.

*Each of the following BeyondTrust components can be configured to connect on a port other than 443: representative console, customer client, presentation attendee client, Jumpoint, connection agent.

‡ If the LDAP server is outside of the DMZ, the BeyondTrust Connection Agent is used to authenticate users via LDAP.

Auditing

Logging and storage

BeyondTrust Secure Remote Access provides two types of session logging. All the events of an individual session are logged as a text-based log. This log includes users involved, session tools used, chat transcripts, system information, and any other actions taken by the SRA user. This data is available on the B Series Appliance in an uneditable format for up to 90 days, but it can be moved to an external database using the Secure Remote Access API or the integration client. All sessions are assigned a unique session ID referred to as an LSID. The session LSID is a 32-character string that is a unique GUID for each session. The LSID is stored as part of each session log for every session conducted.

Secure Remote Access also allows enabling video session recordings. This records the visible user interface of the endpoint screen for the entire screen sharing session. The recording also contains metadata to identify who is in control of the mouse and keyboard at any given time during the playback of the recorded session. The period of time these recordings remain available depends on the amount of session activity and the available storage, up to 90 days maximum. As with the session logging, these recordings can be moved to an external file store using the API or the integration client.

Each B Series Appliance model has a certain amount of available disk space. If this space becomes filled, the oldest data is automatically deleted, even if the number of days set to keep logging data has not been reached. The integration client can be used to export data off the B Series Appliance and store it if needed to comply with security policies. Secure Remote Access can also be configured to store data for a shorter period of time to help comply with security policies.

BeyondTrust integration client

The Secure Remote Access integration client is a Windows application that uses the API to export session logs, recordings, and backups from one or more B Series Appliances according to a defined periodic schedule. The integration client uses plug-in modules to determine the repository for the exported data.

Secure Remote Access provides two integration client plug-in modules. One handles export of reports and video recordings to a file system destination. The second exports select report information (a subset of the entire data collection) to a Microsoft SQL Server database. Setup of the integration client for SQL Server includes all of the procedures needed to automatically define the necessary database, tables, and fields.

In practice, the integration client is used to export session data that must be retained for legal and compliance reasons. The reports and recordings are archived in a file system, indexed by session IDs. Data stored in the SQL Server tables may be queried to locate the Secure Remote Access session ID corresponding to given search criteria such as date, user, or IP address.

All authentication events, such as when a user logs in to the console or accesses the /login or /appliance web interface, generate a syslog event which can be logged on a syslog server. Additionally, any configuration change that is made to the B Series Appliance also generates a syslog event showing the change that was made and by which user. If the syslog configuration itself is ever modified, it results in an administrative email sent by the B Series Appliance to the configured administrative email account for the B Series Appliance.