Sometimes security is ignored due to timelines, money, politics etc… I recently had to explain why having different web functions on the one physical box is a bad idea…

- Good security practice recommends separating and segregating different functions, especially in a web environment, to different systems
- Being on different systems, access can be controlled on what is allowed to pass through to each system through firewalls.
- for example, the application server running middleware only needs to talk to the database server on sql ports to run queries
- therefore controls can be put in place on each of the systems which should be separated by firewalls on how and what is accessed.
- Assumptions should be made that each server should be sacrificed in a worse case scenario. Meaning it should be assumed that a server will be compromised. If this is taken into consideration, then we have to limit the damage of the impact of the server. If set up correctly as described above, then if one server is compromised, then attackers will only have access to the one server. But in the case of all the web functions being put on the same server, if there is a vulnerability in just one of those functions, then they have access to all the data in each of the functions. This is also the same for servers that are physically or logically placed on the same network without any controls to restrict their access.
- The final risk is that of the underlying operating system. If there is a vulnerability in the OS of the server, then again attackers will be able to access the data stored in each of the functions of the web systems.