# User Guide

## Security & Privacy

### Security

#### Authentication

All communication between BEA Guardian and servers in the target domain requires valid username and password credentials. BEA Guardian prompts you for the username and password of an administrator account on the target domain when you conduct an evaluation or activate a domain. You can choose to have BEA Guardian remember the username and password so you won't have to enter them for every evaluation.

#### Data Encryption

All passwords persisted on disk are encrypted. Usernames and server names are also encrypted. This encryption helps prevent the disclosure of any clear text data that could compromise the security of your domain.

#### Secure Transmission

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is available for all communication with BEA over the Internet and all communication with Guardian Agents in your target domain. Please note that Guardian uses 128 bit open source encryption for SSL. If you want to use SSL, there are three types of communication to consider:

- Target domain communication - to set SSL encryption for communication between BEA Guardian and your target domain during domain activation and evaluation, select the https:// communications protocol in the Domain Activation Wizard.
- Signature downloads - to set SSL encryption for downloading signatures from BEA Support, select Require SSL in your BEA Guardian Preferences. This will also set SSL encryption for uploading signature usage statistics (see Privacy below).
- Support case creation - to set SSL encryption for opening support cases with BEA Support, select Require SSL in your BEA Guardian Preferences.

### Privacy

When you download signatures from BEA Support, BEA collects high level statistics about your signature usage, including the number of times each signature was evaluated and detected. No customer data is included in the usage statistics. This information is only used in aggregate to assess each signature's effectiveness and is crucial to the continuous improvement of BEA Guardian.

Following is a sample signature usage statistic:

- "signature id" is the unique identifier for the signature
- "type" is the category of signature used
- "fired" is how many times the signature was considered for use (and includes times it was disqualified before evaluation due to targeting products not present on the domain)
- "evaluated" is how many times the signature was actually compared to the target domain
- "detected" is how many times the signature was actually found on the target domain

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<usage>
<signature id="WAR0001.001" type="Evaluation" fired="30" evaluated="18" detected="2" />
<signature id="ADMIN0001.001" type="Evaluation" fired="30" evaluated="20" detected="1" />
</usage>

#### Related Concepts

- Domain
- Evaluation
- Guardian Agent
- Signature
- Support Case

#### Related Tasks

- Activate Domain
- Update Guardian

#### Related Reference

- Domain Activation Wizard
- Preferences