FPN design: prevent employee from content when accessing externally

Question

I have a portal architecture question that neither my IBM nor SAP consultant could answer in a satisfactory way:
situation: we're about to setup a federated portal network with multiple producer portals. We think we have to setup 2 consumer portals: one for internal users with full content and one for external access with reduced content (e.g. no MSS or BOBJ when accessing from the outside).
It is our understanding that the external client still directly connects with the producer portal for getting its contents so the reverse proxy has to let the URL request go through.
the problem:
an employee can find out the producer URL and directly access the producer from the outside. Since the user is known at the producer they can sign-in there and access all content.
We have security concerns and want to present sensitive content only to users on our internal network.
the question:
how can we  prevent for sure that an employee accessing the portal from the outside can only access non-sensitive content.
... or ... are our requirements unusual and we should change?

Answer 1

Hi,
the best way for ensuring that sensitive information isn't accessible from the outside is to make this kind of information not accessible from the outside. If you cannot seperate internal and external information on seperate servers:
Content published on the portal normally is being accessed by an URL. WebDynpro is integrated as an iFrame and BI reports are executed on the BI portal.
Even if you do integrate this kind of content via FPN, they seem to reside on the consumer, but when accessed the producer URL is called. Try to put a Firewall between your consumer and producer that will only allow internal IP adresses to pass.
User -> DMZ -> Consumer -> Firewall -> Producer
The user clicks on the MSS iView that is basically an ITS or WD that calls the Producer URL. The Firewall checks the IP of the user and blocks it.
If you want to prevent the user even to see the to-be blocked content in the navigation of the consumer, you'll have to code your own navigation / dynamical role assignment that checks if the user is connected in the Intranet or Internet and constructs on-the-fly the correct navigation.
br,
Tobias