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8. Security and Maintenance

Once the CE is in production, security and maintenance becomes really important. In this chapter, we’ll go through a set of best practices for any production system.

8.1. Firewalling

The CE runs a wide range of services. Some of them need to interact with the user, while some others need to interact with the administrator or with nobody at all. Assuming that we trust the CE server for outgoing connections, we’ll focus only on incoming traffic to define the services that need to be open for interaction.

Table 3. Subscribers

ServiceDefault portConfig option

Customer self care interface

443 TCP

www_csc→apache→port

SIP

5060 UDP

kamailio→port

SIP

5060 TCP

kamailio→port + kamailio→disable_tcp (Disabled by default)

RTP

30000-40000 UDP

rtpproxy→minport + rtpproxy→maxport


Table 4. Administrators

ServiceDefault portConfig option

SSH/SFTP

22 TCP

NA

Administrator interface

1443 TCP

www_admin→apache→port

Provisioning interfaces

2443 TCP

ossbss→apache→port


8.2. Password management

The CE comes with some default passwords the user should change during the deployment of the system. They have been explained in the previous chapters of this document.

  • The default password of the system account cdrexport is cdrexport. Although this is a jailed account, it has access to sensitive information, namely the Call Detail Records of all calls. SSH keys should be used to login this user, or alternatively a really strong password should be generated.
  • The root user in MySQL has no default password. A password should be set using the mysqladmin password command.
  • The administrative web interface has a default user administrator with password administrator. It should be changed within this interface.
[Important]

Many NGCP services use MySQL backend. Users and passwords for these services are created during the installation. These passwords are unique for each installation, and the connections are restricted to localhost. You should not change these users and passwords.

8.3. SSL certificates.

The CE provides default, self-signed SSL certificates for SSL connections. These certificates are common for every installation. Before going to production state, the system administrator should provide SSL certificates for the web services. These certificates can either be shared by all web interfaces (provisioning, administrator interface and customer self care interface), or separate ones for each them can be used.

  • Generate the certificates. The customer self care interface certificate should be signed by a certification authority to avoid browser warnings.
  • Upload the certificates to the system

  • Set the path to the new certificates in /etc/ngcp-config/config.yml:

    • ossbss→apache→sslcertfile and ossbss→apache→sslcertkeyfile for the provisioning interface.
    • www_admin→apache→sslcertfile and www_admin→apache→sslcertkeyfile for the admin interface.
    • www_csc→apache→sslcertfile and www_csc→apache→sslcertkeyfile for the customer self care interface.
  • Apply the configuration changes with ngcpcfg apply.

8.4. Backup and recovery

Backup

The CE can be integrated with most of the existing backup solutions. While it does not provide any backup system by default, any Debian compatible system can be installed. It’s not the scope of this chapter to go through backup system configuration. We’ll focus on which information needs to be saved.

The minimum set of information to be backed up is:

  • The database information.

This is the most important data in the system. All subscriber information, billing, CDRs, user preferences etc. are stored in the MySQL server. A periodical dump of all the databases should be performed.

  • System configuration options

/etc/ngcp-config/config.yml, /etc/ngcp-config/constants.yml, /etc/mysql/debian.cnf and /etc/mysql/sipwise.cnf files, where your specific system configurations are stored, should be included in the backup as well.

  • Optional: Exported CDRs

The directory /home/jail/home/cdrexport contains the exported CDRs the system has generated so far. It depends on your local call data retention policy whether or not to remove these files after exporting them to an external system.

  • Optional: Custom files

Any custom configurations, like modified templates or additionally implemented services which are not provided by the CE.

Recovery

In the worst case scenario, when the system needs to be recovered from a total loss, you only need 4 steps to get back online:

  • Install the CE as explained in chapter 2.
  • Restore config.yml, constants.yml, debian.cnf and sipwise.cnf from the backup, overwriting your local files.
  • Restore the database dump.
  • Execute ngcpcfg apply.
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