Enabling SSL security

If you click the SSL enabled checkbox in the Connection Settings of either the HATS Studio Create a Project wizard or the project editor, you request that data flowing over the connection to be encrypted to secure the connection.

HATS Studio uses Host On-Demand to provide connection support from HATS applications to 3270 and 5250 applications using Telnet protocols. HATS uses the SSL support provided by Host On-Demand for securing these connections. Using a secure connection over SSL encrypts data flowing over the connection and thus protects it against observation by a third party.

For a connection to be secured, both the HATS application and the Telnet server it is connected to must support SSL. To secure the connection, the Telnet server must provide a certificate, which is used to encrypt the data. This certificate uniquely identifies a machine on one end of the connection.

HATS verifies that the certificate is signed by a well-known certificate authority. The well-known certificate authorities for HATS are Thawte, Verisign, and RSA. If the server has a certificate signed by a well-known certificate authority, the certificate is guaranteed to be unique and secure, and HATS is not required to have a copy of the certificate. If the Telnet server has a self-signed certificate, the administrator of the server generated the certificate based on his or her own information without using a certificate authority. In that case, HATS must have a copy of the self-signed certificate to secure the connection.

If a certificate is required by HATS, you can click Import in the Connection Settings of either the HATS Studio Create a Project wizard or the project editor to import the required certificate from the Telnet server. When the certificate is imported, HATS builds a database called CustomizedCAs.class. The database contains the certificate that you import. The certificate becomes a part of the HATS project, and it is packaged with the rest of the project files when you assemble the project.