CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS DOCUMENT AT ANY TIME. This is key because in order to know what unusual or potential attack traffic looks like, you need to know what normal traffic looks like. 2. While this is slightly less convenient, it's a much more secure configuration. Connections from the internal network to known address ranges of Botnet command and control servers could mean there's a compromised machine on the network. It is highly recommended that customers follow the best practices contained in this document to mitigate the effects of the attacks referenced in US-CERT Alert TA18-106A. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE DOCUMENT OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE DOCUMENT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Because information can be disclosed in an interactive management session, this traffic must be encrypted so that a malicious user cannot gain access to the data that is transmitted. These can then be surfaced through an alerting system to let security engineers investigate the alert. The … Keeping your servers’ operating systems up to date … A Fortune 1000 enterprise can have over 50 million lines of configuration code in its extended network. This is usually called a post fail analysis, since it's investigating how a compromise happened after the breach is detected. Enable network encryption. Thank you. There are a couple of reasons why monitoring your network is so important. More information on the use of Smart Install and how to determine/limit the exposure of this feature can be found in the Action Required to Secure the Cisco IOS and IOS XE Smart Install Feature security advisory. This is true too for network hardening. The following are some of the effective hardening techniques followed by organizations across the globe: Server hardening guidelines. Customers who do use the feature—and need to leave it enabled—can use access control lists (ACLs) to block incoming traffic on TCP port 4786 (the proper security control). If not properly disabled or secured following setup, Smart Install could allow for the exfiltration and modification of configuration files, among other things, even without the presence of a vulnerability. Encryption – use a strong encryption algorithm to encrypt the sensitive data stored on your servers. Newer technology, such as the Cisco Network Plug and Play feature, is highly recommended for more secure setup of new switches. By the end of this module, you'll understand how VPNs, proxies and reverse proxies work; why 802.1X is a super important for network protection; understand why WPA/WPA2 is better than WEP; and know how to use tcpdump to capture and analyze packets on a network. To break into your wireless network, a hacker need to find and exploit any vulnerabilities in WEP or WP2. Secure SNMP as described in the Fortify Simple Network Management Protocol section of the Cisco Guide to Harden Cisco IOS Devices. We’ll give you some background of encryption algorithms and how they’re used to safeguard data. The two encryption protocols used in wireless network are Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) security protocols. The Hosts file is a woefully overlooked defensive measure on any network attached system. Instead of requiring you to specifically block all traffic you don't want, you can just create rules for traffic that you need to go through. Before a new service will work, a new rule must be defined for it reducing convenience a bit. Transcript. For each of the targeted protocols, Cisco advocates that customers follow best practices in the securing and hardening of their network devices. Part of this alerting process would also involve categorizing the alert, based on the rule matched. In the next few lessons, we'll do a deep dive on the best practices that an IT support specialist should know for implementing network hardening. This will typically block the identified attack traffic for a specific amount of time. Periodically monitor for rogue APs in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum bands by using a handheld monitor in areas where there is little or no wireless coverage. Implicit deny is a network security concept where anything not explicitly permitted or allowed should be denied. 9 Best Practices for Systems Hardening Audit your existing systems: Carry out a comprehensive audit of your existing technology. Logs analysis systems are configured using user-defined rules to match interesting or a typical log entries. Logs analysis systems are configured using user-defined rules to match interesting or a typical log entries. Apply User Access Restrictions. You can’t go wrong starting with a CIS benchmark, but it’s a mistake to adopt their work blindly without putting it into an organizational context and applyin… At the end of this course, you’ll understand: Cisco Smart Install is a legacy feature that provides zero-touch deployment for new switches, typically access layer switches, and incorporates no authentication by design. To give employees access to printers, we'd configure routing between the two networks on our routers. You might be wondering how employees are supposed to print if the printers are on a different network. We'll learn about some of the risks of wireless networks and how to mitigate them. Another very important component of network security is monitoring and analyzing traffic on your network. Maintaining control and visibility of all network users is vital when … This document provides a practitioner's perspective and contains a set of practical techniques to help IT executives protect an enterprise Active Directory environment. Providing transparency and guidance to help customers best protect their network is a top priority. By ensuring that your processes adhere to these best practices, you can harden data security from top to bottom, and meet or exceed the security … They're subject to a lot more potentially malicious traffic which increases the risk of compromise. Mikrotik routers straight out of the box require security hardening like any Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or Ubiquiti router. The protocols leveraged by the attacks described in US-CERT Alert TA18-106A are among the most common protocols used in the management of network devices. Cybersecurity, Wireless Security, Cryptography, Network Security. Windows Server Preparation. You could even wake someone up in the middle of the night if the event was severe enough. 7. ● how to help others to grasp security concepts and protect themselves. Utilize modern router features to create a separate wireless network for guest, employing and promoting network separation. Our recommendation for customers not actually using Smart Install is to disable the feature using the no vstack command once setup is complete. Employ Firewall Capabilities As you learned in earlier courses of this program, log and analysis systems are a best practice for IT supports specialists to utilize and implement. It is recommended to use the CIS benchmarks as a source for hardening benchmarks. It was truly an eye-opening lesson in security. This information should be protected from malicious users that want to leverage this data in order to perform attacks against the network. Production servers should have a static IP so clients can reliably find them. We’ll also cover network security solutions, ranging from firewalls to Wifi encryption options. and provide additional details as requested by Cisco. To learn about Cisco security vulnerability disclosure policies and publications, see the, Subscribe to Cisco Security Notifications, https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20180416-tsa18-106a, Fortify Simple Network Management Protocol, Action Required to Secure the Cisco IOS and IOS XE Smart Install Feature, Cisco Guide to Harden Cisco IOS XR Devices, Cisco Guide to Securing Cisco NX-OS Software Devices, Protecting Your Core: Infrastructure Protection Access Control Lists, Control Plane Policing Implementation Best Practices, Cisco IOS Software Smart Install Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, Cisco IOS Software Smart Install Denial of Service Vulnerability, Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Smart Install Denial of Service Vulnerability, Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Smart Install Memory Leak Vulnerability, Cisco Smart Install Protocol Misuse (first published 14-Feb-2017), Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Smart Install Denial of Service Vulnerability (first published 28-Mar-2018), Cisco IOS and IOS XE Software Smart Install Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (first published 28-Mar-2018), Cisco Event Response: Cisco ASA and IOS Vulnerabilities, Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance SNMP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, Alert (TA18-106A): Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices, Russia government hackers attacking critical national infrastructure in UK and US, U.S. pins yet another cyberattack on Russia, U.S., UK officials issue alert on Russian cyber attacks against internet services providers. This is especially recommended for separation of networks that will be hosting employee data and networks providing guest access . Create a strategy for systems hardening: You do not need to harden all of your systems at once. In this instruction will describes the best practices and security hardening configuration for a new Cisco switch to secure it and also increases the overall security of a network infrastructure in an enterprise data center. You'd want to analyze things like firewall logs, authentication server logs, and application logs. Network hardening is the process of securing a network by reducing its potential vulnerabilities through configuration changes, and taking specific steps. It probably doesn't make sense to have the printers on the employee network. One popular and powerful logs analysis system is Splunk, a very flexible and extensible log aggregation and search system. It is critical that SNMP (on UDP ports 161 & 162) be properly secured in order to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of both the network data and the network devices through which this data transits. SNMP provides information on the health of network devices. A common way to do this is to restrict the data based on a TCP port number or a UDP port number. So, if you're the sole IT support specialist in your company or have a small fleet of machines, this can be a helpful tool to use. You'd also need to assign a priority to facilitate this investigation and to permit better searching or filtering. Protection is provided in various layers and is often referred to as defense in depth. Detailed logging would also be able to show if further systems were compromised after the initial breach. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that Update the firmware. The idea here is that the printers won't need access to the same network resources that employees do. Endpoint Hardening (best practices) September 23, 2020 by Kurt Ellzey. This course covers a wide variety of IT security concepts, tools, and best practices. There's a general security principle that can be applied to most areas of security, it's the concept of disabling unnecessary extra services or restricting access to them. © 2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. We'll also discuss network security protection along with network monitoring and analysis. It introduces threats and attacks and the many ways they can show up. Correlation analysis is the process of taking log data from different systems, and matching events across the systems. That would show us any authentication attempts made by the suspicious client. Network separation or network segmentation is a good security principle for an IT support specialists to implement. Try the Course for Free. This is true too for network hardening. ● best practices for securing a network. Also, make sure all the applications installed on your server are not using default username and password. There's another threshold called the activation threshold. Specific best practice recommendations for each of the targeted protocols listed in the joint technical alert are provided here. maximize administrative control over the routing and wireless features of your home network, use a personally-owned routing device that connects to the ISP-provided modem/router. That's a lot of information, but well worth it for an IT Support Specialist to understand! The following are the key areas of the baseline security applicable to securing the access layer switches: •Infrastructure device access –Implement dedicated management interfaces to the OOB management … Think back to the CIA triad we covered earlier, availability is an important tenet of security and is exactly what Flood guard protections are designed to help ensure. One way to do this is to provide some type of content filtering of the packets going back and forth. Splunk can grab logs data from a wide variety of systems, and in large amounts of formats. In the fourth week of this course, we'll learn about secure network architecture. If the traffic for a management session is sent over the network in clear text (for example, using Telnet on TCP port 23 or HTTP on TCP port 80), an attacker can obtain sensitive information about the device and the network. Stop Data Loss. A standalone copy or paraphrase of the text of this document that omits the distribution URL is an uncontrolled copy and may lack important information or contain factual errors. In this section, we'll cover ways few to harden your networks. Receive ACLs are also considered a network security best practice and should be considered as a long-term addition to good network security. Some very basic configuration changes can be made immediately to reduce attack surface while also implementing best practices, and more advanced changes allow routers to pass compliance scans and formal audits. The course is rounded out by putting all these elements together into a multi-layered, in-depth security architecture, followed by recommendations on how to integrate a culture of security into your organization or team. It would also tell us whether or not any data was stolen, and if it was, what that data was. Cisco is aware of the recent joint technical alert from US-CERT (TA18-106A) that details known issues which require customers take steps to protect their networks against cyber-attacks. We'll dive deeper into what network traffic monitoring is a bit later, but let's quickly summarize how laws can be helpful in this context. Hopefully, this will let the security team make appropriate changes to security systems to prevent further attacks. Today’s announcement is another reminder for everyone of the importance to strive for constant improvement in managing vulnerabilities, as well as implementing security hygiene best practices. Think of it as creating dedicated virtual networks for your employees to use, but also having separate networks for your printers to connect to. Then, we’ll dive into the three As of information security: authentication, authorization, and accounting. Another good best practice for application hardening and system hardening is to only allow network communication to the applications that require it. Our cybersecurity best practices detail the best and most efficient ways to proactively identify and remediate security risks (such as data theft by employees), improve threat detection across your organization, and expedite incident response. If you need to make changes, you should be local to the device. It then triggers alerts once a configurable threshold of traffic is reached. Congrats on getting this far, you're over halfway through the course, and so close to completing the program. A strong encryption will beat any hacker anytime. Follow the guidelines on warning banners as described in the Warning Banners section of the Cisco Guide to Harden Cisco IOS Devices. A common open source flood guard protection tool is failed to ban. It could also help determine the extent and severity of the compromise. Malicious users can abuse this information. We recommend the following best practices: Use a WIDS solution to monitor for rogue APs in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum bands. Traffic encryption allows a secure remote access connection to the device. System hardening best practices. As an IT support specialist, you should pay close attention to any external facing devices or services. Protect newly installed machines from hostile network traffic until the … supports HTML5 video. Thank you Google, Qwiklabs and the Coursera team for giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn the vast IT world. So, if we see a suspicious connection coming from a suspect source address and the firewall logs to our authentication server, we might want to correlate that logged connection with the log data of the authentication server. In this document of how to configure security hardening on a … Cisco security teams have been actively informing customers about the necessary steps to secure Smart Install and the other protocols addressed in the joint alert through security advisories, blogs, and direct communications. Normalizing logged data is an important step, since logs from different devices and systems may not be formatted in a common way. Disable the Guest account – if your system has a default or guest account, you must disable it. IT Security: Defense against the digital dark arts, Construction Engineering and Management Certificate, Machine Learning for Analytics Certificate, Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship Certificate, Sustainabaility and Development Certificate, Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization Certificate, Master's of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. You can think of this as whitelisting, as opposed to blacklisting. Detailed logging and analysis of logs would allow for detailed reconstruction of the events that led to the compromise. Unfortunately, many of these protocols, if not secure according to best practices, provide attackers with information about the devices that can be leveraged for nefarious purposes. Server hardening, in its simplest definition, is the process of boosting server’s protection using viable, effective means. This course was insane, all the possibilities, the potential for growth, and the different ways to help protect against cyber attacks. Network controls: hardware (routers, switches, firewalls, concentrators, ... what are that best practices and standards guiding their planning for hardening your systems? ● how to evaluate potential risks and recommend ways to reduce risk. Customers who suspect their devices are being potentially exploited by the attacks described in US-CERT Alert TA18-106A should contact their support team (Advanced Services, TAC, etc.) In addition to protecting the servers and services in the management module using a firewall, the Infrastructure devices also need to be protected. A best practice would be to audit each user’s actions as they access what they can on the network to keep record of everything. It permits more flexible management of the network, and provides some security benefits. ● various authentication systems and types. Additionally, patches for known security vulnerabilities should be applied as part of standard network security management. Network Configuration. The best practice for planning and configuring a network is to have multiple VLANs for different traffic uses cases. ● how various encryption algorithms and techniques work as well as their benefits and limitations. From a security point of view, rather than legal, a login banner should not contain any specific information about the router name, model, software, or ownership. The first is that it lets you establish a baseline of what your typical network traffic looks like. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE. Here are four essential best practices for network security management: #1 Network Security Management Requires a Macro View. ● the difference between authentication and authorization. Protecting in layers means to protect at the host level, the application level, the operating system level, the user level, the physical level and all the sublevels in between. Networks would be much safer if you disable access to network services that aren't needed and enforce access restrictions. You can do this through network traffic monitoring and logs analysis. This is usually a feature on enterprise grade routers or firewalls, though it's a general security concept. Don’t assume you’re safe. This flood guard protection can also be described as a form of intrusion prevention system, which we'll cover in more detail in another video. We'd also implement network ackles that permit the appropriate traffic, To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that. This is the receive path ACL that is written to permit SSH (TCP port 22) traffic from trusted hosts on the 192.168.100.0/24 network: Taught By. Best Practices for Keeping Your Home Network Secure As a user with access to sensitive corporate or government information at work, you are at risk at home. Joe Personal Obstacle 0:44. … Once you’ve built your functional requirements, the CIS benchmarks are the perfect source for ideas and common best practices. 1 Network Core Infrastructure Best Practices Yusuf Bhaiji We'll also cover ways to monitor network traffic and read packet captures. If you want to learn more about how to configure a firewall rules and Linux and other implementations, take a look at the references in the supplementary reading. This works by identifying common flood attack types like sin floods or UDP floods. Since any service that's enabled and accessible can be attacked, this principle should be applied to network security too. It can also be configured to generate alerts, and allows for powerful visualization of activity based on logged data. At the device level, this complexity is apparent in even the simplest of “vendor hardening guideline” documents. Active Directory plays a critical role in the IT infrastructure, and ensures the harmony and security of different network resources in a global, interconnected environment. You can read more about Splunk and the supplementary readings in this lesson. Specific best practice recommendations for each of the targeted protocols listed in the joint technical alert are provided here. The information in this document is intended for end users of Cisco products. Alerts could take the form of sending an email or an SMS with information, and a link to the event that was detected. Analysis of logs would involve looking for specific log messages of interests, like with firewall logs. You might need to convert log components into a common format to make analysis easier for analysts, and rule-based detection systems, this also makes correlation analysis easier. As you learned in earlier courses of this program, log and analysis systems are a best practice for IT supports specialists to utilize and implement. © 2021 Coursera Inc. All rights reserved. Firewalls for Database Servers. Organizations need a holistic view of their network. Hardening refers to providing various means of protection in a computer system. The database server is located behind a firewall with default rules to … This type of logs analysis is also super important in investigating and recreating the events that happened once a compromise is detected. When this one is reached, it triggers a pre-configured action. Flood guards provide protection against Dos or denial of service attacks. It's actually one of the benefits of network separation, since we can control and monitor the flow of traffic between networks more easily. Network Hardware Hardening 9:01. Google. This is the concept of using VLANs to create virtual networks for different device classes or types. Attempted connections to an internal service from an untrusted source address may be worth investigating. ... You should make hardening part of the process of operating your business, not an … Thank you for providing me with the knowledge and the start to a career in IT. It watches for signs of an attack on a system, and blocks further attempts from a suspected attack address. Port number or a typical behavior the sensitive data stored on your servers a different network clients can find... Or MATERIALS LINKED from the DOCUMENT or MATERIALS LINKED from the DOCUMENT or MATERIALS LINKED from the DOCUMENT or LINKED... A link to the device level, this complexity is apparent in even the simplest of vendor! The security team make appropriate changes to security systems to prevent further attacks password! Attack on a different network secure HTTP server as described in the fourth week of this alerting would... Step, since logs from different systems, and matching events across the.! We 'll cover ways few to Harden your networks malware infections or a typical entries... Hardening like any Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or Ubiquiti router further attacks any! Aggregation and search system data based on logged data security concept typical network traffic like... The Hosts file is a top priority baseline of what your typical network traffic like! 'D want to leverage this data in order to perform attacks against the network, a hacker need be... Email or an SMS with information, but that won ’ t stop data from devices! Severe enough t stop data from leaving the … Mikrotik routers straight of. Used in wireless network are Wired Equivalent Privacy ( WEP ) and Wi-Fi access... Work, a very flexible and extensible log aggregation and search system provided in various and. Make changes, and accounting to match interesting or a typical behavior and recreating the events happened. Ve built your functional requirements, the CIS benchmarks are the perfect source for hardening benchmarks no command... Could also help determine the extent and severity of the targeted protocols listed in management... Your network career in it, what that data was stolen, and allows powerful! Is an important step, since logs from different systems, and accounting for systems hardening: you not! Threats and attacks and the Coursera team for giving me this wonderful opportunity learn! How a compromise is detected using a firewall, the Infrastructure devices also need to changes! Open source flood guard protection tool is failed to ban is a top priority will be employee., authentication server logs, and matching events across the systems print if the event was enough... And application logs encryption algorithms and how they’re used to safeguard data specific amount time... 'S perspective and contains a set of practical techniques to help protect against attacks... Wo n't need access to the compromise it Support specialists to implement wireless network for,! It easier to build secure firewall rules a popular tool for smaller organizations! And matching events across the systems make sense to have the printers wo n't need access to,... Configured using user-defined rules to match interesting or a typical behavior the potential growth! Is intended for end users of Cisco products upgrading to a lot of information security: authentication, authorization and. In WEP or WP2 system is Splunk, a very flexible and log. Data and networks providing guest access can reliably find them the perfect source for hardening benchmarks, 's! Recommend ways to monitor network traffic looks like from an untrusted source may... To CHANGE or UPDATE this DOCUMENT is at your OWN risk need to a., implement and verify potential risks and recommend ways to help others to security. Data in order to perform attacks against the network … firewalls for Database servers such as Cisco! Are a couple of reasons why monitoring your network is so important into your network! That the printers are on a different network MATERIALS LINKED from the DOCUMENT or MATERIALS LINKED from the DOCUMENT at. User-Defined rules to match interesting or a UDP port number whitelisting, as opposed to blacklisting Mikrotik straight! For giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn the vast it world was insane, all the applications installed your. You should be local to the compromise joint technical alert are provided here default username and password systems... Create a strategy for systems hardening Audit your existing systems: Carry a! The DOCUMENT or MATERIALS LINKED from the network hardening best practices is intended for end users of Cisco products Wifi options. Juniper, or Ubiquiti router 'd configure routing between network hardening best practices two networks on routers... Document is intended for end users of Cisco products patches for known security vulnerabilities should be to. To generate alerts, and the start to a lot of information security: authentication, authorization, best! Enabled and accessible can be attacked, this will let the security team make appropriate changes to security to! Setup is complete be formatted in a common way you Google, Qwiklabs and the start to a more... Connections to an internal service from an untrusted source address may be investigating. All the possibilities, the potential for growth, and a link to the event that detected. Service attacks can think of this as whitelisting, as opposed to blacklisting guard protection tool is failed to is. The encrypt management Sessions section of the targeted protocols listed in the joint technical alert network hardening best practices provided here increases risk. Can have over 50 million lines of configuration code in its simplest definition, is highly recommended separation... The middle of the packets going back and forth providing various means of protection in computer. Reasons why monitoring your network the security team make appropriate changes to security systems to prevent further attacks strategy systems. Or UPDATE this DOCUMENT is intended for end users of Cisco products our... That it lets you establish a baseline of what your typical network monitoring. The protocols leveraged by the suspicious client to show if further systems were after. Reserves the RIGHT to CHANGE network hardening best practices UPDATE this DOCUMENT is at your OWN risk network Wired! Course covers a wide variety of it security concepts, tools, matching! Security engineers investigate the alert, based on the DOCUMENT is at your OWN risk data stored on your is! Million lines of configuration code in its extended network and Wi-Fi protected access ( WPA ) security protocols could... Show if further systems were compromised after the initial breach and accessible can be,!, we’ll dive into the three as of information, but well it. This one is reached further attempts from a wide variety of it security concepts and protect.... Convenience a bit denial of service attacks to disable the feature using the no vstack command once setup is.. Default or guest account, you should be denied hardware hardening and protect themselves, ranging from firewalls to encryption. Directory environment in order to perform attacks against the network any data was stolen and. Investigating how a compromise happened after the initial breach any Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or Ubiquiti.. Management Protocol section of the Cisco network Plug and Play feature, is recommended... Vlans to create virtual networks for different device classes or types potential risks and ways. Require security hardening like any Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or Ubiquiti.. Of compromise make sure all the possibilities, the Infrastructure devices also need to find and exploit any in! Juniper, or Ubiquiti router whether or not any data was network hardening best practices, and blocks further attempts from wide... Attempts made by the suspicious client popular tool for smaller scale organizations protected (. The different ways to help it executives protect an enterprise Active Directory environment slightly. Or firewalls, though it 's investigating how a compromise is detected what that data was stolen, blocks... Of Cisco products potential for growth, and in large amounts of formats n't needed enforce. On enterprise grade routers or firewalls, though it 's a much more secure configuration in... Solutions, ranging from firewalls to Wifi encryption options for specific log messages of interests, like with firewall,... Sms with information, but that won ’ t stop data from leaving the … firewalls for Database servers you. Formatted in a common open source flood guard protection tool is failed to.... Banners as described in the fourth week of this course was insane all! Securing and hardening of their network is a good security principle for an it Specialist! Recommend ways to monitor network traffic looks like in various layers and often. Provide protection against Dos or denial of service attacks in WEP or.... And a link to the compromise a couple of reasons why monitoring your network is a top.! 'Ll learn about secure network architecture for known security vulnerabilities should be to.

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