Securing Nginx Servers and Achieving HIPAA Compliance, A How To Tutorial.

What is a Nginx Server?

Nginx (pronounced "engine-x") is a high-performance web server and reverse proxy server. It is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

Nginx is widely used in production environments by various high-traffic websites, such as Netflix, GitHub, and WordPress, due to its performance and reliability.

In this post, we will explore its features, use-cases, and how to make your Nginx setup HIPAA-compliant.

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Key Features of Nginx Server

• High Concurrency: Efficiently handles thousands of simultaneous connections due to its event-driven architecture.
• Load Balancing: Supports multiple load balancing algorithms like round-robin, least connections, and IP hash.
• Reverse Proxy with Caching: Caches responses from proxied servers, speeding up repeated requests.
• FastCGI, uWSGI, and SCGI support: Integrates well with various application servers and can handle dynamic content.
• HTTP/2 and WebSocket support: Ensures modern web performance and real-time communication.
• SSL/TLS Support: Secures data transfer with encryption.
• Static and Dynamic Content Delivery: Efficiently serves both static files and dynamic content generated by application servers.

Main Uses of Nginx

1. Web Server:

• Serves static content like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and videos.
• Can handle a large number of concurrent connections, making it ideal for high-traffic websites.

2. Reverse Proxy:

• Acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from servers.
• Helps in load balancing, distributing client requests across multiple servers to ensure no single server becomes a bottleneck.
• Improves performance by caching static content, reducing the load on backend servers.

3. Load Balancer:

• Distributes incoming network or application traffic across multiple servers.
• Enhances availability and reliability of applications by spreading the load.

4- Content Caching:

• Stores copies of frequently requested content to speed up response times for users.
• Reduces the load on backend servers by serving cached content.

5- Security Features:

• Offers SSL/TLS termination, providing secure communication between clients and servers.
• Protects against common web vulnerabilities, such as DDoS attacks, by rate limiting and filtering requests.

6- Mail Proxy:

• Can serve as a proxy server for email (IMAP/POP3/SMTP) protocols.

In the following is how to configure Ngnix Server for HIPAA-compliance.

1. Nginx Security Configuration

Reference Platform Requirements:

• Nginx ~1.10 (v1.3+ required)
• CentOS 7 (or any other compatible platform)

SSL Configuration and Vulnerability Scanners:

• Use the following headers to enhance security:
  • STRICT-TRANSPORT-SECURITY: Properly set.
  • X-FRAME-OPTIONS: Properly set.
  • X-XSS-PROTECTION: Properly set.
  • X-CONTENT-TYPE-OPTIONS: Properly set.
  • CONTENT-SECURITY-POLICY: Enforced (ensure no overly permissive directives).
• Obtain an A+ rating on SSL Labs by configuring strong ciphers, enabling HTTP/2, and implementing secure renegotiation.

SSL Certificate and PEM File Notes:

• Use a PEM format x509 certificate file (including the signed CRT and intermediary CA certificates but excluding the External Root CA certificate).

Example creation (if you have the SSL chain file already):

cat www.example.com.crt COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt COMODORSAAddTrustCA.crt > /etc/ssl/ssl-bundle.pem

2. HIPAA Compliance

Authentication and Authorization:

• Allow file uploads only by authenticated users (standard parse-server allows unauthenticated uploads by default).

Encryption in Transit:

• Set up Nginx to run behind a proxy (e.g., Nginx with Let’s Encrypt) for encryption in transit.
• Ensure that all communication is over HTTPS.

Remember to test your configuration thoroughly and monitor for any security vulnerabilities. By following these guidelines, you can secure your Nginx server and achieve HIPAA compliance.

I’ve provided an overview of securing Nginx servers and achieving HIPAA compliance. If you need more detailed instructions or have additional questions, feel free to ask! 😊

Resources

• ¹: GitHub - Montana/hipaa-compliance-config
• ²: GitHub - netreconlab/parse-hipaa
• ³: NGINX Plus FIPS Compliance | NGINX Documentation
• ⁴: GitHub - nginx-compliance-config/nginx.conf