Harden the infrastructure and the Sterling Order Management System Software applications

After the successful completion of your end-to-end tests, you should next harden your infrastructure starting with the operating systems, database, and application servers. When that is completed, we recommend that you harden your network.

You should also lock down access to all the integration touchpoint into the Sterling™ Order Management System Software applications. This includes, at a minimum, all your integration calls to the Interoperability Servlet, Web Services, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), and so on.

You will have to change your test programs as you apply the hardening recommendations. For example, when you harden or secure the Java™ Messaging Services as dictated in the JMS services security and Message queue security sections, you will have to modify your test programs to authenticate into the queues.

After you have applied the hardening recommendations, you should rerun your end-to-end test cases.

You should use the knowledge and experience gained from this first exercise to validate the system architecture and to document the integration architecture. Given these two artifacts, your next step should be to build out your network architecture. This is where a good understanding of all the software components, the integration data flows, and the nonfunctional requirements (such as expected transaction volumes) will be invaluable.