Abstract

To police our web site, we created a secure web publishing application, DryDock, that governs the replication of content from an internal, developmental web server to a stripped-down, external, production web server. DryDock codifies a formal approval process that forces management to approve all web site changes before they are pushed out to the external machine. Users never interact directly with the production machine; DryDock updates the production server on their behalf. This allows administrators to operate their production web server in a more secure and regimented network environment than normally feasible.

DryDock audits documents, tracks revisions, and notifies users of changes via email. Managers can approve files for publication at their leisure without the risk of inappropriate content ever being publicly visible. Web authors can develop pages without intimate knowledge of security policies. And administrators can instantly know the complete history of any file that has ever been published.

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