Customize Remote Agent's encryption key

Customize Remote Agent's encryption key in order to increase the security of remote management.

Before you begin this task, Remote Agent must be installed and running on the target device and security must be enabled.

When you enable security in Remote Agent, connections between the project development application and the target device are automatically encrypted. This prevents third-party programs from intercepting projects or sending unauthorized Run/Stop commands to the target device

By default, Remote Agent uses a built-in encryption key that should be secure enough for most situations. You may choose to customize the key, however, because a more unique key can provide a more secure connection.

To customize the key:

1. Determine what you want the key to be.

   It does not matter what the key actually is, because it is automatically shared between Remote Agent and the project development application. As such, you can use an online GUID generator to generate a suitable key.

2. On the target device, exit Remote Agent.

3. Create an initialization file to store the key:

   1. Locate the Remote Agent program file (CEServer.exe).

   2. In the same directory, create a new text file named RemoteAPI.ini.

4. Edit the initialization file to insert the following lines:

   [Protection]

   InternalKey=<your custom key>

5. Save and close the initialization file.

6. Run Remote Agent.

Remote Agent will automatically share the new key with the project development application, when you use the Remote Management tool to connect to the target device and log on as an authorized user.