Another very important component of network security is monitoring and analyzing traffic on your network. At the end of this course, youâll understand: â how to help others to grasp security concepts and protect themselves. SNMP provides information on the health of network devices. The first is that it lets you establish a baseline of what your typical network traffic looks like. Malicious users can abuse this information. Server hardening, in its simplest definition, is the process of boosting server’s protection using viable, effective means. Here are four essential best practices for network security management: #1 Network Security Management Requires a Macro View. Also, make sure all the applications installed on your server are not using default username and password. Flood guards provide protection against Dos or denial of service attacks. Then, weâll dive into the three As of information security: authentication, authorization, and accounting. 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. Most IT managers faced with the task of writing hardening guidelines turn to the Center for Internet Security (CIS), which publishes Security Configuration Benchmarksfor a wide variety of operating systems and application platforms. â best practices for securing a network. This can usually be configured on a firewall which makes it easier to build secure firewall rules. Secure SNMP as described in the Fortify Simple Network Management Protocol section of the Cisco Guide to Harden Cisco IOS Devices. That would show us any authentication attempts made by the suspicious client. For each of the targeted protocols, Cisco advocates that customers follow best practices in the securing and hardening of their network devices. 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. When this one is reached, it triggers a pre-configured action. These can then be surfaced through an alerting system to let security engineers investigate the alert. Maintaining control and visibility of all network users is vital when … 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. 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. Before a new service will work, a new rule must be defined for it reducing convenience a bit. 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. 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. 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). At the device level, this complexity is apparent in even the simplest of “vendor hardening guideline” documents. It watches for signs of an attack on a system, and blocks further attempts from a suspected attack address. Create a strategy for systems hardening: You do not need to harden all of your systems at once. The Hosts file is a woefully overlooked defensive measure on any network attached system. 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. 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: Logs analysis systems are configured using user-defined rules to match interesting or a typical log entries. 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. This is different from blocking all traffic, since an implicit deny configuration will still let traffic pass that you've defined as allowed, you can do this through ACL configurations. The information in this document is intended for end users of Cisco products. Since any service that's enabled and accessible can be attacked, this principle should be applied to network security too. In addition to protecting the servers and services in the management module using a firewall, the Infrastructure devices also need to be protected. Thank you Google, Qwiklabs and the Coursera team for giving me this wonderful opportunity to learn the vast IT world. System hardening best practices. To break into your wireless network, a hacker need to find and exploit any vulnerabilities in WEP or WP2. Taught By. This works by identifying common flood attack types like sin floods or UDP floods. 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. Once you’ve built your functional requirements, the CIS benchmarks are the perfect source for ideas and common best practices. Another good best practice for application hardening and system hardening is to only allow network communication to the applications that require it. They're subject to a lot more potentially malicious traffic which increases the risk of compromise. 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. 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. To give employees access to printers, we'd configure routing between the two networks on our routers. Organizations need a holistic view of their network. Try the Course for Free. … 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. 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. 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. 7. There are a couple of reasons why monitoring your network is so important. Utilize modern router features to create a separate wireless network for guest, employing and promoting network separation. Apply User Access Restrictions. Prerequisites . Most enterprises rely on employee trust, but that won’t stop data from leaving the … Receive ACLs are also considered a network security best practice and should be considered as a long-term addition to good network security. 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.) Believe it or not, consumer network hardware needs … supports HTML5 video. â how to evaluate potential risks and recommend ways to reduce risk. Employ Firewall Capabilities Enable network encryption. © 2021 Coursera Inc. All rights reserved. Network Software Hardening 5:00. Detailed logging would also be able to show if further systems were compromised after the initial breach. You can do this through network traffic monitoring and logs analysis. Stop Data Loss. 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. A common open source flood guard protection tool is failed to ban. ... You should make hardening part of the process of operating your business, not an … Mikrotik routers straight out of the box require security hardening like any Arista, Cisco, Juniper, or Ubiquiti router. It would also tell us whether or not any data was stolen, and if it was, what that data was. It could also help determine the extent and severity of the compromise. Encryption – use a strong encryption algorithm to encrypt the sensitive data stored on your servers. This is especially recommended for separation of networks that will be hosting employee data and networks providing guest access . Cybersecurity, Wireless Security, Cryptography, Network Security. 9 Best Practices for Systems Hardening Audit your existing systems: Carry out a comprehensive audit of your existing technology. Google. You might be wondering how employees are supposed to print if the printers are on a different network. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS DOCUMENT AT ANY 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. Thank you for providing me with the knowledge and the start to a career in IT. This information should be protected from malicious users that want to leverage this data in order to perform attacks against the network. It introduces threats and attacks and the many ways they can show up. 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. This is the concept of using VLANs to create virtual networks for different device classes or types. Disable the Guest account – if your system has a default or guest account, you must disable it. 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 … In this section, we'll cover ways few to harden your networks. 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. Analyzing logs is the practice of collecting logs from different network and sometimes client devices on your network, then performing an automated analysis on them. Any good design has three basic steps: plan, implement and verify. Specific best practice recommendations for each of the targeted protocols listed in the joint technical alert are provided here. 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. We'll learn about some of the risks of wireless networks and how to mitigate them. 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. 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… Logs analysis systems are configured using user-defined rules to match interesting or a typical log entries. Congrats on getting this far, you're over halfway through the course, and so close to completing the program. 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