Management planes

Web servers, with no open port.

A public web server has to answer on 80 and 443. Everything else it listens on is optional exposure.

The exposure

What an open web servers port gives away

A web server is rarely listening on only its published ports. Management consoles, admin panels, deployment endpoints, staging virtual hosts and the SSH or RDP used to maintain the box are all reachable alongside the site itself.

Those secondary services are where the compromise usually starts. They receive far less scrutiny than the application, they are frequently left on defaults, and they are enumerated by the same scan that finds the website.

How it works

The port is closed, not hidden.

SSHepherd closes the listening ports that are not meant to be public, while the site keeps serving normally on 80 and 443.

Administrative access to the host — the shell, the management console, the deployment path — moves onto an outbound connection to the broker, reachable only by authorised identities.

Attacker scanNo inbound path
Permitted · outboundBlocked · inbound
Protected serversNo inbound listening ports
SSHepherd®Broker
Authorised usersAdmins & vendors
  • Nothing listens inbound
  • Access via broker only
  • Every session monitored
Portless architecture. Servers and users both connect outbound to the SSHepherd® broker, so the protected host never accepts an inbound connection.
What changes

What your customer notices

The public site is unaffected

Visitor traffic on 80 and 443 continues to be served as normal.

The admin surface disappears

Management and deployment endpoints stop answering scans from the internet.

Staging stops leaking

Non-production virtual hosts are no longer discoverable alongside the live site.

Legacy stacks stay usable

An application that cannot safely be upgraded is protected by being unreachable.

See it

Watch the web servers demo.

Protect your IIS servers from hackers. A recorded demo from Full Armor, the developer of SSHepherd®.

Questions

Web servers: common questions

Will this affect visitors to my website?

No. Ports 80 and 443 continue to serve traffic normally. SSHepherd closes the management and administrative ports that were never intended to be public.

Does it work with both Apache and Microsoft IIS?

Yes. SSHepherd operates at the port level rather than inside the web server, so the same model covers Apache, IIS and the tooling around them.

Can it protect an application we cannot patch?

Yes, and this is a common reason to deploy it. An unpatched or end-of-life admin interface that cannot be reached from the internet cannot be exploited from the internet.

Show this to a customer this week.

Auris delivers it locally
Implementation, integration and managed support in-region.
You keep the account
We work behind your customer relationship, not around it.