The It’s On Portal – Providing Data Intelligence into youth activities around Southwark

As we come closer to the launch date for the It’s On portal, I thought I would share with you guys some of the progress we have made since my initial article on the project.

Many of the reports which were made in SSRS have been tested and refined so that they display all the required data to tell users information about the different youth activities available in Southwark. These reports have also been integrated into a website created by my colleague so they are easily accessible and intuitive to users. The easiest way to demonstrate the progress is a tour of the website itself; since the website isn’t fully complete yet i’ll just keep the tour to the main pages with content. I will be writing an article in future when the website is fully operational and will be giving a full tour 🙂

IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Installing Client Side Certificate for SSL Authentication

This short blog is the final instalment of a series of blogs which have explained how to configure a server to use SSL authentication (IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Configuring Server Side SSL Authentication) and how to create a pair of self-signed certificates using the Windows makecert tool (IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Creating SSL Client and Server Certificates).

This blog will explain how a client certificate should be installed onto a web browser which will enable it to access the website being protected by a SSL authentication layer.

For this example, Internet Explorer 9 will be the browser used so the steps may not exactly fit for any other mediums such as Chrome or Firefox. However I’m sure that those browsers will have similar configuration options which allow a user to install certificates.

IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Creating SSL Client and Server Certificates

This blog follows on from my first blog IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Configuring Server Side SSL Authentication which explained how the SSL Authentication layer could be setup and enabled on Windows Server 2008. This blog will explain the certificate creation process which is required on both the server and clients to enable each party to be granted access through to each other. In truth the contents of this blog is largely taken from Ondrej’s Blog which I previously mentioned; but I felt it would be good to bring those guidelines and augment them.

IIS 7, SSL, and Two Factor Authentication – Configuring Server Side SSL Authentication

Recently Aiimi asked to implement a second layer of security for a client’s websites which would use SSL certificate authentication. Since Aiimi didn’t have anyone which a specific expertise in this area I set off into the internet in search of examples and guidelines. Surprisingly, there doesn’t really seem to be a comprehensive guide on how IIS 7 can be configured as well as how self-signed certificates can be created (certificates obtained from CA authorities can also be used but for this task it wasn’t necessary). Whilst there are articles and guides for certain steps of the process which are certainly of good use, I decided that an end to end guide would be beneficial to those who are tasked with a similar problem. This guide will come in the form of 3 separate blogs which will take you through each phase of the whole process.

First tech blog – SSL Certificate Authentication

To kick things off I have prepared a series of tech blogs which document my experiences in implementing client certificate authentication (SSL). This was a challenge which Aiimi was asked to explore by a client who wished to have an extra layer of security for their Livelink website.

When browsing around Google for some guidelines I found various bits and pieces scattered across a number of different websites and forums. But a complete end to end solution was nowhere to be found (Many people claimed that there is no “clear way” to solve this issue, which is true in a way); therefore I thought it would be a nice first blog for me to provide a complete documentation of what I did in order to get things working.

There are 3 blogs in total and I will aim to upload one each week (gotta keep up the suspense!).