Introduction › Network Flows

Network Flows

CA CSM uses the following process to connect you directly to the appropriate CA Technologies website, where they can manage your CA Technologies software:

1. You connect to CA CSM from within your corporate Intranet (locally connected or tunneled in through VPN) using the HTTP protocol such as http://yourmainframe:yourport/MSM).
   • Your systems programmers initiate all actions.
   • No port is exposed to the Internet.
   • No communication is initiated from outside your Intranet.
2. The CA CSM Product Acquisition Service communicates with CA Technologies using the same methods that you previously used when manually accessing the website, as follows:

   HTTPS

   Passes the credentials to, and obtains product information from the appropriate CA Technologies website.

   FTP

   Downloads software packages from CA FTP Services to your mainframe system using an anonymous FTP, with no credentials passed. CA CSM accesses one of the following locations:

   • ftp://scftpd.ca.com
   • ftp://ftp.ca.com
   • ftp://supportftp.ca.com

Note: The following information is the only unencrypted data sent to and from CA Technologies:

• Your email address for anonymous FTP (no password)
• The CA Technologies product information, either base install packages or solutions.

None of this data is part of any privacy or encryption standards.

This process is depicted in the following illustration: