Securing a map service and a mobile content server

ArcGIS Server security enables you to secure your mobile services or mobile content server, or both. Securing a mobile service is like securing a map service or any other service by protecting your data from unauthorized access. A mobile content server is a place where you can store your mobile projects for the field crew to download through the field applications.

Tip:

You can also share your projects via ArcGIS online or ArcGIS Portal.

When you authors a mobile project with Mobile Project Center, credentials for mobile content server are needed when you save a project to ArcGIS for Server or when you try to download a project from the Server. Within Mobile Project Center, you may be prompted for the service credentials when you add the secured mobile service to your project.

Due to the same security mechanism, when your field workers download your project from the mobile content server, they also need to provide credentials to the content server. With secured mobile service(s) in your mobile project, your field workers also need to submit credentials to the ArcGIS Server hosting that service for uploading or downloading data. Though they're working with an ArcGIS for Server in both situations, the credentials to provide can be different.

Secure mobile service

A mobile service is an extension of a map service. The way to secure a mobile service is similar to securing a map service. For details, see Configuring ArcGIS Server security within ArcGIS for Server help.

You can secure your data at folder level or at service level. For example, if you have a few mobile services that belong to the same project, you can choose to publish all of these services under a specific folder for administration purposes. This makes securing these services easier by setting permission at the folder level and letting it propagate to all individual services under it.

Security of the mobile content server

The security of the mobile content server is enabled automatically after ArcGIS Server is installed, meaning that there is no way to remove security on a mobile content server. Mobile content server's Representational State Transfer (REST) endpoint page provides the capabilities for authorized users to perform administrative operations such as creating and deleting a folder, adding and removing projects, and downloading projects. Note that for folder operations and project deletions, the REST endpoint page is the only tool you can use.

As shown in the following table, users with different roles will be able to perform specific operations on mobile content server.

Administrative Operations	User	Publisher	Administrator
Create/delete folders	No	Yes	Yes
Add/delete/move projects	No	Yes	Yes
Download projects	Yes	Yes	Yes

Note:

Mobile content server uses the same user store and authentication method as ArcGIS for Server. This means that once you configure users and roles for an ArcGIS Server, the same users and roles will be applied to Mobile Content Server with privileges listed on the above table. No extra step is needed to configure Mobile Content Server. The only thing you want to make sure of is that the users belong to appropriate roles for their intended operations.

For field workers to download project from server, they need to have at least User privilege.

For details on how to configure users and roles, see Configuring ArcGIS Server security in ArcGIS for Server help.