Configure security settings

As a default administrator or member with the correct privileges, you determine whether HTTPS is required for all transactions and whether anonymous access is allowed to your portal. You can also configure security settings for sharing and searching, password policies, sign in options, access notices, information banners, trusted servers, and more.

Tip:

Visit ArcGIS Trust Center for more in-depth security, privacy, and compliance information.

  1. Verify that you are signed in as a default administrator or as a member of a custom role with the administrative privilege to manage security and infrastructure enabled.
  2. At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
  3. Click Security on the left side of the page.
  4. Configure any of the following security settings:

Access and permissions

Change any of the following policy settings as needed:

  • Allow access to the portal through HTTPS only—By default, the portal enforces HTTPS-only communication to ensure that your organization's data as well as any temporary identification tokens that allow access to your data are encrypted during communications over the internet. Turning off this toggle button allows both HTTP and HTTPS communication. Changes to this setting may affect the performance of the site.
  • Allow anonymous access to your portal—Enable this option to allow anonymous users access to your organization's website. If this option is not enabled, anonymous access is disabled, and anonymous users cannot access the website. They also cannot view your maps with Bing Maps (if your organization is configured for Bing Maps).

    If you enable anonymous access, make sure that the groups selected for the site configuration groups are shared with the public; otherwise, anonymous users may not be able to properly view or access the public content of those groups.

  • Allow members to edit biographical information and who can see their profile—Enable this option to allow members to modify the biographical information in their profile and specify who can see their profile.

Sharing and searching

Change any of the following sharing and search settings as needed:

  • Members can share content publicly—Enable this option to allow members to make their profile visible to everyone (public), share their web apps and other items with the public, or embed their maps or groups in websites.

  • Show social media links on item and group pages—Enable this option to include links to Facebook and Twitter on item and group pages.

Password policy

When members change their passwords, they must conform to the organization's policy. If they don't, a message appears with the policy details. The password policy of the organization does not apply to organization-specific logins such as SAML logins, or app credentials that use app IDs and app secrets.

Click Manage password policy to configure the password length, complexity, and history requirements for members with built-in accounts. You can specify the character length and whether the password must contain at least one of any of the following: uppercase letter, lowercase letter, number, or special character. You can also configure the number of days before the password expires and the number of past passwords that the member cannot reuse. Passwords are case sensitive and cannot be the same as the user name. Click Use portal defaults to reset the organization to use the standard ArcGIS Enterprise password policy (at least eight characters with at least one letter and one number; spaces are not allowed).

Note:

Weak passwords may not be accepted. A password is considered weak if it's a commonly used password such as password1 or includes repetitive or sequential characters—for example, aaaabbbb or 1234abcd.

Note:

If email settings are configured in your organization, an automatic email notification will be sent to your administrative contacts when the password policy is changed.

Logins

You can customize the organization's sign-in page to allow members to sign in using any of the following methods: ArcGIS logins, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) logins (previously known as enterprise logins), and OpenID Connect logins.

You can also customize the order in which the login methods appear on the organization's sign-in page. To reorder a login method, click its handle Reorder and drag it to a new position. Click Preview to see what the sign-in page will look like.

Turn on the ArcGIS login toggle button to allow users to sign in to ArcGIS using their ArcGIS logins.

Use the New SAML login button to configure a SAML-compliant identity provider with your portal if you want members to sign in to the portal using your organization's existing SAML identity provider.

Use the New OpenID Connect login button to configure OpenID Connect logins if you want members to sign in using your organization's existing OpenID Connect identity provider.

Multifactor authentication

Note:

Multifactor authentication can only be enabled if your organization has email settings configured.

Organizations that want to give members the option of setting up multifactor authentication for sign in to ArcGIS can enable the Allow members to choose whether to set up multifactor authentication for their individual accounts toggle button. Multifactor authentication provides an extra level of security by requiring a verification code in addition to a user name and password when members sign in.

If you enable this setting, organization members can set up multifactor authentication through their profile page and receive verification codes on their mobile phones or tablets from a supported authentication app (currently, Google Authenticator for Android and iOS and Authenticator for Windows Phone). Multifactor authentication is not supported for SAML logins or OpenID Connect logins. Members who enable multifactor authentication have a check mark in the Multifactor Authentication column Multifactor authentication of the member table on the Members tab on the Organization page.

If you enable multifactor authentication for your organization, you must designate at least two administrators who will receive email requests to disable multifactor authentication as needed on member accounts. ArcGIS Enterprise sends emails on behalf of members who request help with multifactor authentication through the Having trouble signing in with your code? link (on the page where the member is asked to enter the authentication code). At least two administrators are required to ensure that at least one will be available to help members with any multifactor authentication issues.

Multifactor authentication works with Esri apps that support OAuth 2.0. This includes the portal website, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS apps, and My Esri.

Multifactor authentication must be disabled to access apps without OAuth 2.0 support. For some apps—such as ArcGIS Desktop 10.2.1 and later—that support OAuth 2.0, multifactor authentication must still be disabled before making a connection from ArcGIS Desktop to ArcGIS Enterprise services available as part of ArcGIS Online. This includes geocoding and geoprocessing services that perform routing and elevation analysis. Multifactor authentication must also be disabled when storing credentials with Esri premium content.

Access notice

You can configure and display a notice of terms for users who access your site.

You can configure an access notice for organization members or all users who access your organization, or both. If you set an access notice for organization members, the notice is displayed after members sign in. If you set an access notice for all users, the notice is displayed when any user accesses your site. If you set both access notices, organization members see both notices.

To configure an access notice for organization members or all users, click Set access notice in the appropriate section, turn on the toggle button to display the access notice, and provide a notice title and text. Choose the ACCEPT and DECLINE option if you want users to accept the access notice before proceeding to the site, or select OK only if you want users to only click OK to proceed. Click Save when finished.

To edit the access notice for organization members or all users, click Edit access notice in the appropriate section and make changes to the title, text, or action button options. If you no longer want the access notice displayed, use the toggle button to disable the access notice. After disabling the access notice, the previously entered text and configuration will be retained if the access notice is re-enabled in future. Click Save when finished.

Information banner

You can use information banners to alert all users who access your organization about your site's status and content. For example, inform users about maintenance schedules, classified information alerts, and read-only modes by creating custom messages to appear at the top and bottom of your site. The banner appears on the Home, Gallery, Map Viewer, Scene Viewer, Notebook, Groups, Content, and Organization pages, and on sites created in ArcGIS Enterprise Sites if enabled in the app.

To enable the information banner for your organization, click Set information banner and turn on Display information banner. Add text in the Banner text field and choose a background color and font color. A contrast ratio appears for your selected text and background color. Contrast ratio is a measure of legibility based on WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards; a contrast ratio of 4.5 is recommended to adhere to these standards.

You can preview the information banner in the Preview pane. Click Save to add the banner to your organization.

To edit the information banner, click Edit information banner and make changes to the banner text or styling. If you no longer want the information banner displayed, use the toggle button to disable the information banner. After disabling the information banner, the previously entered text and configuration will be retained if the information banner is re-enabled in future. Click Save when finished.

Trusted servers

For Trusted servers, configure the list of trusted servers you want your clients to send credentials to when making Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requests to access services secured with web-tier authentication. This applies primarily to editing secure feature services from a stand-alone (unfederated) ArcGIS Server or viewing secure OGC services. ArcGIS Server hosting services secured with token-based security do not need to be added to this list. Servers added to the trusted servers list must support CORS. Layers hosted on servers without CORS support may not function as expected. ArcGIS Server supports CORS by default at versions 10.1 and later. To configure CORS on non-ArcGIS servers, refer to the vendor documentation for the web server.

The host names must be entered individually. Wildcards cannot be used and are not accepted. The host name can be entered with or without the protocol in front of it. For example, the host name secure.esri.com can be entered as secure.esri.com or https://secure.esri.com.

Note:

Editing feature services secured with web-tier authentication requires a web browser enabled with CORS. The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari are CORS enabled. To test if your browser has CORS enabled, open https://caniuse.com/cors.

Allow origins

By default, ArcGIS REST API is open to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requests from web applications on any domain. If your organization wants to limit the web application domains that are allowed to access ArcGIS REST API through CORS, you must specify these domains explicitly. For example, to restrict CORS access to web applications on acme.com only, click Add and enter https://acme.com in the text box and click Add domain. You can specify up to 100 trusted domains for your organization. It's not necessary to specify arcgis.com as a trusted domain, as applications running on the arcgis.com domain are always allowed to connect to ArcGIS REST API.

Allow portal access

Configure a list of portals (for example https://otherportal.domain.com/arcgis) with which you want to share secure content. This allows members of your organization to use their organization-specific logins (including SAML logins) to access the secure content when viewing it from these portals. Portals that your organization collaborates with are included automatically and do not need to be added to this list. This is only applicable for portals at ArcGIS Enterprise version 10.5 and later. This setting is not needed for sharing secured content with an ArcGIS Online organization.

The portal URLs must be entered individually and must include the protocol. Wildcards cannot be used and are not accepted. If the portal being added allows both HTTP and HTTPS access, two URLs must be added for that portal (for example http://otherportal.domain.com/arcgis and https://otherportal.domain.com/arcgis). Any portal added to the list is validated first and, therefore, must be accessible from the browser.

Email settings

You can configure email settings for your organization, which can be used to send out email notifications to members. The following email notifications can be configured:

  • Password policy notifications—An automatic email notification will be sent to your administrative contacts when the password policy is changed. If no administrative contacts are set, the oldest administrator account in the organization or the initial administrator account will receive the email notification.
  • Reset password notifications—Administrators can reset a member's password on the Members tab, which will send an email to the member with a temporary password. A member can also request a reset password link when they indicate they have forgotten their password on the organization sign-in page. Emails will be sent to the email address associated with a member's profile.
  • Multifactor authentication notifications—Your organization must have email settings configured in order to enable multifactor authentication. If multifactor authentication is configured, designated administrators will receive email notifications to disable multifactor authentication for specific members if needed.
  • Item comment notifications—When comments are enabled in the organization, item owners will receive email notifications of new comments published to their items.
  • Profile and settings notifications—Members will be notified of changes to their profile and settings such as their password, security question, and profile visibility.

  1. To configure email notifications for your organization, under Email settings, click Configure.

    If email settings are already configured, click Manage to open the Configure email settings window.

  2. On the SMTP settings page, do the following:
    1. Enter the SMTP server address. This is the IP address or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the SMTP server, for example, smtp.domain.com.
    2. Enter the SMTP port. This is the port the SMTP server will communicate over. Some of the most common communication ports are 25, 465, and 587. The default value is 25.
    3. Under Encryption method, select the encryption method for email messages sent from your organization. You can select PLAIN TEXT, STARTTLS, or SSL.
    4. Turn on SMTP authentication required if authentication is required to connect with the SMTP server specified. You can leave this option off if SMTP authentication is not required.
    5. If SMTP authentication required is enabled above, enter the user name and password of a user who is authorized to access the SMTP server.
    6. Enter the email address that organization emails will be sent from. It is recommended that the member associated with this email address be listed under the Administrative contacts for your organization.
    7. Enter the email address label that will display with the sent from email address. The information will be displayed as the sender in the from line for all email notifications. You can use the name associated with the from email address, or use a label such as DO NOT REPLY if you want to discourage members from replying directly to the from email address.
  3. Click Next.
  4. It is recommended that you send a test email to verify that you have configured your email settings correctly. Enter an email address that you can use to verify that the test email is delivered successfully, and click Send Email. A notification will appear to indicate whether the email is sent successfully. You can check the portal logs for more information.
  5. Click Finish to configure email settings.

If you want to disable email notifications from your organization, click Disable.