Relay Authentication for remote registration

We use BigFix in a multi-tenant configuration. We have multiple customers with remote users that do not use VPN or any network connection to their employer but need to be patched to ensure federal requirements concerning NPI and other data. We do have internet facing relays with authentication enabled. We change the passwords often.

I am looking for a solution in which these remote users can install the agent and register with the Internet facing relay without us having to provide those users with the registration password.

I am perfectly ok with giving the end users a new script every time we need to install the agent and have it connect but I absolutely can’t allow a password clear text in such a script.

Anyone else have such challenges?

For a manual key exchange, the client is going to need to have a password to perform the first registration. You could obfuscate the password and decode it in a script on the client, but unless you already have an external crypto system with public/private keys already, you won’t be able to do anything “cryptographically secure”.

You might consider though using the one-time-passwords option. See https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/9.5/platform/Platform/Console/ManualKeyExchange.html

You can create a list of possible passwords, even a unique password for each client. The passwords in the KeyExchangePasswords file are one-time-use - so once a client has registered with one of the passwords, that password cannot be reused by another client (or even by the same machine, if the BES Client is uninstalled/reinstalled later).

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Would it be okay to give them a new MSI?

What if you embedded the new password in the MSI and sent them that?

This way you wouldn’t have to give them the password, and they could just grab the new file.

This may be the answer we are looking for. I will see if we can make this work. Thanks for your knowledge share.

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I am not sure this would work but I am open to trying all options. I will keep you posted on my results.

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