Windows Service Security

Question

Hi, I have a Windows Service (not a webservice) and I need to provide some security. ie. Only authorise users run methods of the service.

Is it possible to use certificates like you can do for webservices? Can anyone describe the process of how one would go about doing this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Caveat : I have not done this before but it seems like one possible solution.

Create a WCF service and host it as a Windows Service.

There is a tutorial on MSDN as to how you can do that

You can use TCP / named Pipes to communicate and can configure security for either of these based on the security options options in WCF i.e.

• Transport
• Message
• Combination of Transport and Message
• TransportWithMessageCredential
• TransportCredentialOnly

For details on each of the security options above and how to use them you can also check out this article

Answer 2

You need windows service in a scenario where you want to do some continuous processing irrespective of user logged in. Your windows service would be running/processing even if no user is logged into system. To add on to this, windows service doesn't expose bunch of methods. It only gives you events like OnStart, OnStop so that you can control your service through Services.msc. In OnStart you merely fires off your business logic and keep doing it until you stop the windows service.

Probably windows service is not the right solution for your scenario.