Internal website on mobile device

[wendyl11356237]

Hi,

Is it possible to have an internal website built on ColdFusion 11 be accessible on mobile devices for use outside of the firm's network?  Security is leading us to a road where we have to replicate the existing website on a different folder to be accessed externally.  Is there another option where only 1 set of code is maintained for both internal (desktop) and external (mobile) access?  I'd also like to use Active Directory for authentication.

Thanks.

Wendy

[Dave Watts]

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that this has nothing to do with ColdFusion, and everything to do with networking. You could, for example, require VPN access from mobile devices to allow them to get to your internal server.

If you're using IIS, you can easily configure it to perform authentication against AD.

I'm not sure exactly what you're aiming at by having two different web sites for internal and external use. How would they be different? Would it be a matter of having different data, or would both use the same data? If they'd use the same data, the web site could be configured within your network's DMZ and accessed by internal and external users at the same time.

Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software

[wendyl11356237]

Hi Dave,

Our IT is currently a no on the VPN solution.

They were advised by Microsoft to architect it so content are strictly either for external or internal use and not for both for security reasons.  This doesn't sit well with me because I don't want to maintain 2 sets of code and files.  I'm glad it's not a ColdFusion issue.  Your solution sounds simple.  Are you able to provide more details on DMZ or direct me to another forum that I can dive deeper?

Thanks.

Wendy

[Dave Watts]

I'm not really sure I have a good resource for setting up a DMZ, but it's basic networking and firewall administration. A DMZ lets you set up servers in a portion of your network that's not strictly internal, and provide specific access rules to expose those servers to the outside world. Anyone with experience configuring firewalls should be able to configure a DMZ as part of that.

Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software

[wendyl11356237]

Thanks Dave.