Securing your data

A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, or root certificate, is a data file provided by a certificate authority (CA) that digitally identifies the sender, receiver, or both parties of a secure transaction. SSL certificates are installed on machines running FileMaker applications to provide secure connections between FileMaker Server and FileMaker clients.

FileMaker Server provides a standard SSL certificate signed by Claris International Inc. that does not verify the server name. The FileMaker default certificate is intended only for test purposes. A custom SSL certificate is required for production use.

To secure your data, you can take advantage of several FileMaker Server features:

• To verify your server name to clients and prevent web browsers from displaying certificate warnings, request a signed SSL certificate that matches your server name. You request a certificate from a trusted CA supported by Claris International Inc. See FileMaker Server Installation and Configuration Guide. See also Creating a certificate signing request.

• Review FileMaker Server log files to monitor accesses to databases. See Viewing and downloading log files.

Notes 

• For more information about creating accounts that authenticate via an external server, see FileMaker Pro Help and the Knowledge Base.

• In FileMaker Pro, you can use the Database Encryption feature to encrypt the contents of a database file. FileMaker Server supports hosting encrypted databases. With FileMaker Server, the server administrator enters the encryption password when the file is opened for hosting. See Opening hosted files.