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SECURITY CHANGES AND ENHANCEMENTS IN FILEMAKER® PRO 21

By Steven H. Blackwell

Security Changes And Enhancements In FileMaker® Pro 21
By:
Wim Decorte
and
Steven H. Blackwell
The recently released FileMaker® Pro 21 new version continues the efforts of Claris/FMI and several members of the FileMaker Developer Community to enhance and improve the Security features in the products.
In this White Paper Wim Decorte and I will discuss much of the Security information relevant to this new release as well as some aspects of other recent patches issued by Claris.
Much of the specific discussion in the White Paper focuses on items within the purview and control of the developer, rather than of Claris, and thus it warrants more attention. These deal with issues that could cause an Escalation of Privileges for Subordinate Level Users.

490 downloads

2 comments

Submitted June 4, 2024
Free

OAuth OIDC Authentication For The FileMaker Platform

By Steven H. Blackwell

The FileMaker Platform works with a number of OAuth OIDC Identity Providers and Brokers. This chart reflects that. Also the White Papers in this section discuss the details of this. These papers were co-authored with Wim Decorte.

504 downloads

0 comments

Updated April 29, 2022
Free

Comparative Analysis Addendum 6

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to release another White Paper in our on-going series about extending OAuth2 and OIDC in the FileMaker Platform.

Addendum 6 Comparative Analysis:Providers and Operating Systems provides an overview of the many options among various IDaaS (Identity as a Service) Providers and Brokers and various versions of FileMaker Server, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

408 downloads

2 comments

Submitted November 29, 2020
Free

Sign In With Apple Addendum 5

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to release another in our series of White Papers related to extending oAuth2 and OIDC to the FileMaker Platform. Addendum5 deals with the use of Apple ID and Sign In With Apple to authenticate FileMaker users.

376 downloads

0 comments

Updated July 21, 2020
Free

OAuth Extensibility Addendum3

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to release another paper in our series on oAuth 2 OIDC and the FileMaker Platform. This one deals with a new IDaaS provider as well as secure password-less authentication.

672 downloads

0 comments

Updated July 2, 2020
Free

The New Add-on Feature: Caveats, Cautions, And Nuances

By Ocean West

In an effort to raise awareness about this and to offer some recommendations about Best Practices, we are providing this document in bullet-point format for the FileMaker Developer Community.
—By—
Stephen Dolenski and Steven H. Blackwell

641 downloads

0 comments

Updated June 12, 2020
Free

OAuth Extensibility Addendum4 Authentication With ADFS

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to announce the release of another Addendum in our series of White Papers on extending the oAuth Authentication capabilities of the FileMaker Platform. This one deals with the use of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).

FileMaker Server has been able to authenticate against Active Directory since 2004 (FileMaker® Pro 7. In order to authenticate users against Active Directory, your FileMaker Server has to be a member server in that Active Directory domain so that FileMaker Server, through the Operating System configuration, would know what domain controller to query for needed information.

But what if you cannot have the FileMaker Server in your Domain? This Addendum addresses that issue.

682 downloads

0 comments

Submitted April 8, 2020
Free

Addendum2 oAuth Extensibility Working With OneLogin

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to announce release of Addendum2 in our oAuth series for the Claris FileMaker Platform. This one focuses on the use of the OneLogin IDaaS service.

331 downloads

1 comment

Submitted March 25, 2020
Free

Addendum oAuth Extensibility

By Steven H. Blackwell

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to release an Addendum to our recent White Paper entitled How FileMaker Developers Can Extend Authentication Options With New Additional OAuth2 Identity Providers In The FileMaker Platform.

This Addendum has some additional technical details for FileMaker Platform developers and server administrators. It also has two Case Studies about where variations of these techniques are in place.

395 downloads

0 comments

Submitted November 13, 2019
Free

How To Extend oAuth

By Steven H. Blackwell

FileMaker® Server 16, introduced in April of 2017, brought with it the capability to use three oAuth2 Identity Providers to authenticate Identity Assertions made in attempts to access hosted FileMaker® Pro files. Google, Amazon, and Microsoft® Azure AD were the three Identity Providers. Since then various members of the developer community have sought ways to expand beyond those three providers to employ other Identity as a Service (IDaaS) options.

Wim Decorte and I are pleased to advise that we have succeeded in an effort to expand the available Identity Provider services to additional systems. We have documented the underlying mechanism that FileMaker Server uses and have identified at least five new major IDaaS providers whose oAuth2 capabilities we can leverage to permit their use in the FileMaker Platform environment. We hope this means, among other items, that the FileMaker Platform can now be used at locations where heretofore it was disqualified due to lack of support of these Authentication options.

We were aided in this endeavor to a substantial degree by assistance from Claris International, Inc. (formerly FileMaker, Inc.) working in a customer environment. This ratifies to a substantial degree the maxim postulated by well-known business author Tom Peters back in the 1970’s that “Innovation doesn’t come from the R&D Department; it comes from the customer base.”

1,613 downloads

1 comment

Submitted October 9, 2019
Free

The FileMaker 18 Platform supports Zabbix

By Ocean West

The FileMaker 18 Platform supports Zabbix, an open-source software monitoring tool to more easily monitor server resources and metrics.

To learn more about how to use Zabbix for monitoring FileMaker Server or FileMaker Cloud for AWS, download the white paper below. It covers installation and setup, configuration, and customization of the tool.

101 downloads

0 comments

Updated May 24, 2019
Free

Startup Restoration White Paper

By Ocean West

Startup restoration is new with FileMaker Server 18. Files are automatically recoverable after a hardware or software crash. The restoration log in FileMaker Server validates database entries when a file is first opened, before client access, and if the file had not been properly closed.

To learn more about how to use startup restoration, download the white paper below. It covers how it works, configuration, best practices, and more.

94 downloads

0 comments

Submitted May 24, 2019
Free

FileMaker18 Security Features

By Steven H. Blackwell

The just-released new FileMaker® Pro 18 Advanced has two new security features about which developers should be aware. One of these is fairly straight-forward and extends functionality existing in earlier versions. The other is brand-new; it requires a nuanced understanding and careful consideration about its use. It allows management of certain Accounts by users who do not have [Full Access] Privileges, and thus it is a very significant change.

588 downloads

0 comments

Updated May 22, 2019
Free

SECURITY SCHEMA CHANGES IN FILEMAKER® PRO 11 AND FILEMAKER® PRO 11 ADVANCED

By Steven H. Blackwell

The newly released versions of FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro Advanced, and FileMaker Server Advanced all have significant changes in their security features. The desktop client products have a new File Access Protection feature and new calculation functions related to Extended Privileges and Privilege Set Names. Additionally there is a change in the default Menu Commands option when developers create a new Privilege Set. FileMaker Server Advanced has some new features related to role-based administration of the FileMaker Server Advanced product; that is beyond the scope of this paper however.
This paper will examine the new security features in FileMaker® Pro 11 and FileMaker® Pro 11 Advanced, with specific emphasis on the File Access Protection enhancements.
Why were these changes needed? Why were they implemented? What are they? And, how do they work?

83 downloads

0 comments

Submitted April 18, 2019
Free

FileMaker Workplace Innovation Platform Security Building Blocks

By Steven H. Blackwell

The FileMaker Workplace Innovation Platform has evolved over the past fifteen years since the release in 2004 of FileMaker® Pro 7 to encompass now a robust suite of security features to protect the Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, and Resilience of organizational data. This same set of Security Building Blocks also helps to provide protection to organizations from a wide variety of risks including business continuity, regulatory sanctions, criminal and civil liability, and reputational damage.

354 downloads

2 comments

Updated February 28, 2019
Free

Federated Identity Management, Zero Trust, And The FileMaker Platform

By Steven H. Blackwell

Federated Identity Management is one of the most important concepts in modern Information Security Services. What is it, and how do developers and administrators implement it? What problems does it solve? How does it relate to the FileMaker Platform?

362 downloads

2 comments

Submitted July 9, 2018
Free

FileMaker® Server 17: Admin Console, Admin CLI, And Admin API

By Steven H. Blackwell

Extensive discussion of new methods for administering FileMaker Server. Jointly authored with Wim Decorte.

575 downloads

0 comments

Updated May 15, 2018
Free

FileMaker® Server 17 And SSL Certificates: Configuration And Use

By Steven H. Blackwell

Information about new SSL processes and options. Jointly authored with Wim Decorte.

969 downloads

1 comment

Updated May 15, 2018
Free

FileMaker® Server 17: Server Monitoring Functionality

By Steven H. Blackwell

Discussion of new processes for monitoring FileMaker Server. Jointly authored with Wim Decorte.

294 downloads

0 comments

Submitted May 15, 2018
Free

External Server 9 Authentication

By Steven H. Blackwell

External Server Authentication paper by Wim Decorte and Steven H. Blackwell.

445 downloads

1 comment

Updated February 18, 2018
Free

New Security Features Version 16

By Steven H. Blackwell

This paper by Wim Decorte and Steven H. Blackwell introduces the new security features in Version 16 of the FileMaker Platform.

692 downloads

0 comments

Updated February 18, 2018
Free

OAuth Identity Providers

By Steven H. Blackwell

OAuth Identity Providers by Wim Decorte and Steven H. Blackwell

759 downloads

3 comments

Updated February 18, 2018
Free

FileMaker Platform Recovery Process

By Steven H. Blackwell

This White Paper details the FileMaker Platform Recovery process. Originally released with FileMaker® Pro 10, it still contains much information useful today about the process and its 16 separate steps.

Steven H. Blackwell
Platinum Member Emeritus, FileMaker Business Alliance

268 downloads

0 comments

Updated February 17, 2018
Free

Five Emerging Trends To Impact FileMaker Platform Security

By Steven H. Blackwell

With the advent of a new Fiscal Year for the FileMaker Developer Community, we will experience five emerging trends in FileMaker Information Security. Each of these will likely have specific impact on developers, on our clients, on the Platform, and on the larger business environment in which we operate. Cumulatively and symbiotically, the magnified impact of the five will have the potential to alter many long-standing practices and conventions.

428 downloads

1 comment

Updated February 9, 2018
Free

Security Tech brief #2 (FMP 9)

By Steven H. Blackwell

Security tech brief as it was updated for FileMaker® Pro 9.

31 downloads

0 comments

Submitted April 11, 2017