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7. Configure as shown above.
8. Click on the IPv6 Drop.
9. Configure as shown above.
10. Click OK to create the profile object.
11. Now associate that profile object with a security zone.
12. Select Network > Zones. Create a new zone or modifying an existing zone.
13. Go to the Zone Protection and set it to the object created above.
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14. Click OK.
15. Commit the changes.
7.10.2 Denial of Service (DoS) Protection Profile
The DoS protection profiles, and DoS protection policy rules combine to protect specific groups
of critical resources and individual critical resources against session floods such as TCP SYN
floods. Compared to the Zone protection profiles, which protect entire zones from flood attacks,
DoS protection provides granular defense for specific systems and targets such as web servers
and database servers. By default, this feature is not enabled. When it is enabled, the default
value is 10,000 connections per second. If the CPS is set too low, the TOE may start dropping
legit half-open TCP connections (per destination). If the CPS is set too high, the TOE resources
may be exhausted before the protection is activated.
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Object > Security Profiles > DoS Protection. Click Add.
3. Configure the same values but also specify the block duration.
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4. Click OK.
5. Go to Policies > Dos Protection. Click Add.
6. On the General tab, enter a name and description.
7. Specify the source and destination zones and/or IP addresses.
8. On the Option/Protection tab, specify the service (e.g., web server or servicehttp/service-https) and select the profile created above in the Aggregate.
9. Click OK.
10. Commit the changes.
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7.11Configure IKE/IPsec VPN Gateway
The administrator can configure the TOE as an IKE/IPsec VPN gateway and specify IKEv1 only
mode, IKEv2 only mode, or IKEv2 preferred mode. The gateway begins its negotiation with its
peer in the mode specified here. If the administrator selects IKEv2 preferred mode, the two
peers will use IKEv2 if the remote peer supports it; otherwise, they will use IKEv1.
WARNING: If you specify IKEv1 mode only or IKEv2 preferred mode, you must specify main for
the Exchange Mode (done on the Network > IKE Gateways > Advanced Options tab).
Aggressive mode is not allowed in the evaluated configuration.
NAT traversal (NAT‐T) must be enabled on both gateways if NAT is occurring on a device that
sits between the two gateways. Select the Advanced Options tab and select Enable NAT
Traversal.
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A trusted channel is established only if the presented identifier in the peer certificate matches
the configured reference identifier, and the peer certificate is signed by a trusted anchor CA
specified in the Certificate Profile. Local identification defines the format and identification of
the local gateway. The Local Certificate identifies the local gateway certificate (RSA-based or
ECDSA-based) that will be presented to the IKE peer. Select the Local Identification type from
the following: Distinguished Name (Subject), FQDN (hostname), IP address, and enter the value.
Peer identification defines the format and identification of the peer gateway. Select the Peer
Identification type from the following: Distinguished Name (Subject), FQDN (hostname), IP
address, and enter the value.
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When configuring an IKE cryptographic profile:
• Only the following Diffie-Hellman (DH) groups are to be used: group14; group19;
group20.
• Only the following authentication algorithms are to be used: sha1; sha256; sha384;
sha512.
• Only the following encryption algorithms are to be used: aes-128-cbc; aes-192-cbc; aes256-cbc.
When configuring an IPsec cryptographic profile:
• Select ESP (Encapsulating Security Payload) as the IPsec Protocol. Do not use AH
(Authentication Header).
• Only the following encryption algorithms are to be used: aes-128-cbc; aes-192-cbc; aes256-cbc; aes128-gcm; aes-256-gcm. Do not specify aes-128-ccm.
• Only the following authentication algorithms are to be used: sha1; sha256; sha384;
sha512.
• Only the following Diffie-Hellman (DH) groups are to be used: group14; group19;
group20.
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Note also, when configuring and selecting IKE and IPsec cryptographic profiles, that the key
strength of the encryption algorithm specified in the IPsec profile is not to be greater than the
key strength of the encryption algorithm specified in the IKE profile. For example, if the
configured IKE profile specifies aes-128-cbc, then the configured IPsec profile must not specify
aes-256-cbc or aes-256-gcm.
The Phase 1 lifetime is configured in the IKE profile and can be specified in seconds, minutes,
hours, or days. The supported range is 3 minutes to 365 days, with a default of 8 hours. The
Phase 2 lifetime is configured in the IPsec profile and can be specified in terms both of time (in
seconds, minutes, hours, or days—the supported range is 3 minutes to 365 days) (denoted as
Lifetime), and volume of data (denoted as Lifesize).
The administrator may choose to allow a successful IKE SA even when the peer identification
does not match the peer identification in the certificate by selecting Permit peer identification
and certificate payload identification mismatch. This selection is not permitted in the evaluated
configuration.
7.11.1 Policy-Based Forwarding
The Policy-Based Forwarding (PBF) provides information on configuring rules consistent with the
definition of an IPsec Security Policy Database (SPD) as specified in RFC 4301 (i.e., rules that
contain operations that DISCARD, BYPASS, and PROTECT network packets).
The following example shows how to set up connections between peer VPN devices and
configure Policy-Based Forwarding and security policy rules for DISCARD, BYPASS and
PROTECT processing. It uses the following setup:
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(1) Configure Zones, Ports, and Interfaces on the Branch Firewall:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Network > Zones. Click Add.
• Enter the zone name in the Name field. In example above, ISP2.
• Select Type as Layer 3.
3. Click OK.
4. Select Network > Interfaces. Click ethernet1/8.
5. Select Interface Type as Layer 3.
6. On the Config tab
• set Assign Interface To – Virtual Router = branch-router (created in step 13)
• Set Assign Interface To – Zones = ISP2 (or the zone you created in step 2).
7. On the IPv4 tab
• Select Static as the Type.
• Click Add.
• Type 30.1.1.40/24 as in example above.
8. Click OK.
9. On the Tunnel tab (part of the Network > Interfaces page)
10. Click Add. Should be named tunnel.<1-9999>.
11. On the IPv4 tab
• Select Static as the Type.
• Click Add.
• Type 1.1.1.2/24 as in example above.
12. Click OK.
13. Select Network > Virtual Routers. Click Add.
• Enter the name in the Name field. In example above, branch-router.
• Click on the side Static Routes tab. Click Add.
• Enter the name in the Name field. For example, ISP2-PBF
• Enter the Destination field. For example, 172.16.100.0/24.
• Enter the Interface field. For example, ethernet1/8.
• Select Next Hop as None.
• Enter 11 (as different than IPsec route) for Metric.
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• Click OK.
14. Click OK.
(2) Configure Zones, Ports, and Interfaces on the HQ-Central Firewall:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Network > Zones. Click Add.
• Enter the zone name in the Name field. In example above, ISP2.
• Select Type as Layer 3.
3. Click OK.
4. Select Network > Interfaces. Click ethernet1/8.
5. Select Layer 3 as Interface Type.
6. On the Config tab
• set Assign Interface To – Virtual Router = central-router (created in step 13)
• Set Assign Interface To – Zones = ISP2 (or the zone you created in step 2).
7. On the IPv4 tab
• Select Static as the Type.
• Click Add.
• Type 30.1.1.20/24 as in example above.
8. Click OK.
9. On the Tunnel tab (part of the Network > Interfaces page)
10. Click Add. Should be named tunnel.<1-9999>.
11. On the IPv4 tab
• Select Static as the Type.
• Click Add.
• Type 1.1.1.1/24 as in example above.
12. Click OK.
13. Select Network > Virtual Routers. Click Add.
• Enter the name in the Name field. In example above, central-router.
• Click on the side Static Routes tab. Click Add.
• Enter the name in the Name field. For example, ISP2-PBF
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• Enter the Destination field. For example, 172.16.101.0/24.
• Enter the Interface field. For example, ethernet1/8.
• Select Next Hop as None.
• Enter 11 (as different than IPsec route) for Metric.
• Click OK.
14. Click OK.
(3) Configure PBF Rules for ISP2 on the Branch Firewall:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Policy Based Forwarding. Click Add.
• Enter the rule name in the Name field. In example above, ISP2-PBF.
• On Source tab, select Interface as Type.
i. In the Interface window, click Add.
ii. Select ethernet1/1 as in example above.
iii. In the Source Address window, Click Add.
iv. Enter 172.16.100.87 as in example above.
v. Select any for Source User window.
• On Destination/Application/Service tab
i. In the Destination Address window, click Add.
ii. Enter 172.16.101.100 as in example above.
iii. Leave default any for both Applications and Service
• On Forwarding tab
i. Select Forward as the Action. This should be the default action.
ii. Select ethernet1/8 as the Egress Interface as shown in example.
iii. Enter 30.1.1.20 as Next Hop (IP address of peer device alternative
interface).
3. Click OK.
4. Create a policy rule for ISP-IPSEC.
• Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, ISP-IPSEC.
• On the Source tab, select Interface as Type.
i. In the Interface window, click Add.
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ii. Select ethernet1/1 as in example above.
iii. In the Source Address window, Click Add.
iv. Enter 172.16.100.87 as in example above.
v. Select any for Source User window.
• On Destination/Application/Service tab
i. In the Destination Address window, click Add.
ii. Enter 172.16.101.100 as in example above.
iii. Leave default any for both Applications and Service
• On Forwarding tab
i. Select Forward as the Action. This should be the default action.
ii. Select tunnel.1 as the Egress Interface as shown in example.
iii. Enter 1.1.1.1 as Next Hop (IP address of peer device alternative interface).
5. Click OK.
(4) Configure PBF Rules for ISP2 on HQ-Central Firewall:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Policy Based Forwarding. Click Add.
• Enter the rule name in the Name field. In example above, ISP2-PBF.
• On Source tab, select Interface as Type.
i. In the Interface window, click Add.
ii. Select ethernet1/1 as in example above.
iii. In the Source Address window, Click Add.
iv. Enter 172.16.101.100 as in example above.
v. Select any for Source User window.
• On Destination/Application/Service tab
i. In the Destination Address window, click Add.
ii. Enter 172.16.100.87 as in example above.
iii. Leave default any for both Applications and Service
• On Forwarding tab
i. Select Forward as the Action. This should be the default action.
ii. Select ethernet1/8 as the Egress Interface as shown in example.
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iii. Enter 30.1.1.40 as Next Hop (IP address of peer device alternative
interface).
3. Click OK.
4. Create a policy rule for ISP-IPSEC.
• Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, ISP-IPSEC.
• On the Source tab, select Interface as Type.
i. In the Interface window, click Add.
ii. Select ethernet1/1 as in example above.
iii. In the Source Address window, Click Add.
iv. Enter 172.16.101.100 as in example above.
v. Select any for Source User window.
• On Destination/Application/Service tab
i. In the Destination Address window, click Add.
ii. Enter 172.16.100.87 as in example above.
iii. Leave default any for both Applications and Service
• On Forwarding tab
i. Select Forward as the Action. This should be the default action.
ii. Select tunnel.1 as the Egress Interface as shown in example.
iii. Enter 1.1.1.2 as Next Hop (IP address of peer device alternative interface).
5. Click OK.
(5) Configure a Security Policy on the Branch Firewall to allow Traffic:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Security. Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, PBF_rule_Allow.
• On the Source Zone tab, add ISP2 and Branch.
• On the Destination Zone tab, add ISP2 and Branch.
• On the Application tab, select any as the Applications.
• On the Service/URL Category tab, select any as the Service and URL Category.
• On the Action tab, select Allow as the Action.
3. Click OK.
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(6) Configure a Security Policy on the HQ-Central Firewall to allow Traffic:
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Security. Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, PBF_rule_Allow.
• On the Source Zone tab, add ISP2 and Central.
• On the Destination Zone tab, add ISP2 and Central.
• On the Application tab, select any as the Applications.
• On the Service/URL Category tab, select any as the Service and URL Category.
• On the Action tab, select Allow as the Action.
3. Click OK.
This configuration will cause packets that match the PBFrule security policy to be forwarded to
the VPN peer without going through the IPsec tunnel, effectively acting as a BYPASS rule, while
packets that match the VPNrule security policy will be forwarded to the VPN peer via the IPsec
tunnel, effectively acting as a PROTECT rule.
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Security. Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, PBF_rule_Allow.
• On the Source Zone tab, add ISP2 and Branch.
• On the Destination Zone tab, add ISP2 and Branch.
• On the Application tab, select any as the Applications.
• On the Service/URL Category tab, select any as the Service and URL Category.
• On the Action tab, select Allow as the Action.
3. Click OK.
To configure a DISCARD rule, create a security policy to deny traffic through the interfaces.
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Select Policies > Security. Click Add.
• On the General tab, enter a name in Name field. For example, Deny-All.
• On the Source Zone tab, check any checkbox.
• On the Destination Zone tab, check any checkbox.
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• On the Application tab, select any as the Applications.
• On the Service/URL Category tab, select any as the Service and URL Category.
• On the Action tab, select Deny as the Action.
3. Click OK.
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7.12Verify and Update System Software
The administrator must verify the TOE version is the evaluated version 10.2.3-h2. The TOE
version is verified using the show system info command. If the delivered version is not version
10.2.3-h2 please follow the commands:
• request system software check
• request system software download version 10.2.3-h2
• request system software install version 10.2.3-h2
The TOE supports system software download and update process (Device > Software). For
direct download, the TOE must be connected to the Internet. If the TOE is not connected to the
Internet, the software updates must be acquired through a different means and uploaded to the
TOE. All software updates are digitally signed by Palo Alto Networks. The TOE will verify all
digital signature prior to installation. If the verification fails, the TOE will not install the system
updates. Please confirm the system updates are authentic by downloading the images from
updates.paloaltonetworks.com only.
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. View the TOE software version.
• UI: Dashboard > General Information
• CLI: show system info | match sw-version
• API: See below
3. Select Device > Setup > Services. Click on the gear setting.
4. Make sure the TOE is connected to the correct updates.paloaltonetworks.com (Internet
connection required!).
5. Select Device > Software.
6. Click Check Now.
7. If the TOE is connected to the updates.paloaltonetworks.com, find the version you want
to download and click Download under the Action column.
8. If the TOE is not connected to the Internet, click Upload to upload the system update.
You must first download it from https://support.paloaltonetworks.com/. Browse to the
directory where the downloaded system image is stored on the local computer. Select
the system image you want to upload and upload it to the TOE.
9. Click Install to install the system update under the Action column.
WARNING: You MUST reboot the system! The installation cannot complete until the system
is rebooted.
10. Login with Administrator Role.
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11. Verify the updated TOE software version.
• UI: Dashboard > General Information
• CLI: show system info | match sw-version
CLI HINT: The equivalent CLI commands are request system software check, request system
software download version <Version Number> and request system software install version
<Version Number>.
API HINT: The equivalent XML API calls are (replace version as needed)
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7.13XML and REST API
The Application Programming Interface (API) allows administrators to manage the TOE through a
third-party service, application, or script. The TOE supports two types of API: REST API and XML
API.
• The XML API uses a tree of XML nodes to map TOE functionality. To make an API
request, you must specify the XPath (XML Path Language) to the XML node that
corresponds to a specific setting or action. XPath allows you to navigate through the
hierarchical XML tree structure for the TOE.
• The administrator can use the REST API to Create, Update, Rename, Delete (CRUD)
Objects and Policies on the TOE; the administrator can access the REST API directly on
the TOE to perform these operation on policies and objects from a central location and
push them to the managed TOEs.
Use your administrative username and password to generate an API key to authenticate API
calls. Granular roles allow you to grant API access to specific functionality including reports, logs,
and operational mode commands.
7.13.1 Structure of XML API Request
A PAN-OS XML API request typically comprises a number of parameters, as shown in the
example below:
• API key (key=): The API key allows you to authenticate yourself to the API when making
requests.
• Request type (type=): Because the XML API allows you to perform a wide array of
requests, you must first specify the type of request you want, ranging from configuration
to operation, importing to exporting, and from reports to user ID.
• Action (action=): When the request type is config (configuration) or op (operational mode
command), you must also specify an associated action, such as edit, delete, or move.
• XML and XPath elements (xpath= or cmd=): When using configuration or operational
mode commands on the TOE, you include only the XML or the XPath that specifies the
XML node.
To make requests to the PAN-OS XML API, you can use the GET and POST methods.
7.13.2 API Authentication and Security
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To use the API (XML or REST), you must enable API access for your administrators and get your
API key. By default, the TOE supports API requests over HTTPS. To enforce key rotation set an
API key lifetime; the administrator can also revoke all API keys to protect from accidental
exposure.
7.13.3 API XML and XPath
The XML API uses XML for both requests and responses. When making requests, construct an
HTTPS GET or POST request with the correct type and action along with the correct XPath.
Here is an example API request:
Replace variables such as <TOE> and <APIkey> with the IP address or hostname of the TOE and
API key, respectively.
When making configuration requests (type=config), the administrator can use XPath, a syntax for
selecting nodes from within an XML document. Use the XPath to isolate and modify portions of
your configuration. The XML configuration within PAN-OS uses four different types of nodes as
shown here:
<users>
<entry name="admin">
<permissions>
<role-based>
<superuser>yes</superuser>
</role-based>
</permissions>
</entry>
<entry name="guest">
<permissions>
<role-based>
<custom>
<profile>NewUser</profile>
</custom>
</role-based>
</permissions>
</entry>
</users>
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• Root nodes are top-level nodes with no parent. Requesting the root node returns all child
elements.
• Element nodes represent containers of information. Element nodes can contain other
element nodes or simply act as a container of information. Example:
<permissions></permissions>
• Attribute nodes are nodes that contain name/value pairs. Example: <entry
name="admin"></entry>
• Text nodes contain plain text. Example: <superuser>yes</superuser>
7.13.4 XPath Node Selection
There are various ways to specify the XPath for an XML node in an API request. The simplest is
to use the location path of the resource. For example, to select all users within your management
configuration, use the following path:
/config/mgt-config/users
Another method for selecting the XPath for an XML node is to select the specific node, such as
the superuser or NewUser node within the node shown above. Use XPath syntax similar to the
following to drill-down and select a specific node:
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7.13.5 Enable API Access
The API supports the following types of Administrators and Admin roles:
• Dynamic roles: Superuser, Superuser (readonly), Device admin, Device admin (readonly),
Vsys admin, Vsys admin (readonly)
• Role-based Admins: Device, Vsys.
Admin Role profiles enable or disable features on the management interfaces of the TOE, XML
API, web interface, and CLI.
NOTE: As a best practice, set up a separate admin account for XML API access.
1. Login with Administrator Role.
2. Go to Device > Admin Roles and select or create an admin role.
3. Select features available to the admin role.
4. Select the XML API tab.
5. Enable or disable XML API features from the list, such as Report, Log, and Configuration.
6. Select OK to confirm your change.
7. Assign the admin role to an administrator account.
7.13.6 Get Your API Key
To use the API, you must generate the API key required for authenticating API calls.
Then, when you use this API key in your request, you can either provide the URL encoded API
key in the request URL or use the custom X-PAN-KEY: <key> parameter to add the key as a
name-value pair in the HTTP header.
A successful API call returns status="success" along with the API key within the key element:
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<response status="success">
<result>
<key>gJlQWE56987nBxIqyfa62sZeRtYuIo2BgzEA9UOnlZBhU</key>
</result>
</response>
A failure API call is shown below.
<response status = 'error' code = '403'><result><msg>Invalid Credential</msg></result></response>
You can revoke all currently valid API keys, in the event one or more keys are compromised. To
change an API key associated with an administrator account, change the password associated
with the administrator account. API keys that were generated before you expired all keys, or a
key that was created using the previous credentials will no longer be valid.
Example 1 of using the API key, make a cURL call to get system information, which returns the IP
address, hostname, and model of the TOE.
Example 2 of using the API key, make a cURL call to make a commit.
NOTE: When you make your API calls, as an alternative to providing the URL encoded API key in
the request URL, you can use the custom X-PAN-KEY: <key> parameter to add the key as a
name value pair in the HTTP header. For example, curl -H "XPAN-KEY:
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LU234T02234565s2Z1FtZWFyWXJOSTdk1234565234565=" -k
'https://<TOE>/api/?type=op&cmd=<show><system><info></info></system></show>'
NOTE: Curl requires a backward slash to encode some special character such as a square
bracket. For example, curl -k -X GET
'https://10.8.48.106/api/?type=config&action=set&xpath=/config/devices/entry\[@name='loc
alhost.localdomain'\]/deviceconfig/system/ssh/ciphers/mgmt&element=<aes256-
cbc></aes256-cbc>&key=… '
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7.13.7 Structure of REST API Request
The PAN-OS REST API URL format includes a base path and the URI for the endpoint.
The base path includes the FQDN or IP address of the TOE and the version. The resource URI is
the path for the resource or endpoint you want to work with, and it corresponds with the
resources you can access on the web interface.
• Base path and the resource URI for the endpoint.
• Query parameters. Every request includes query parameters that are passed to the API
endpoint using query strings. The query parameters are appended to the URL with a ?
that indicates the start of the query string. The query parameters appear after the ?, the
parameter are concatenated with other parameters using the ampersand & symbol.
For example, use REST API to create security policy (firewall) rule
curl -X POST \
'https://10.1.1.4/restapi/10.2.3/Policies/SecurityRules?
location=vsys&vsys=vsys1&name=rule-example1' \
-H 'X-PAN-KEY: LUFRPT=' \
-d '{
"entry": [
{
"@name": "rule-example1",
"@location": "vsys",
"@vsys": "vsys1",
"to": {
"member": [
"any"
]
},
"from": {
|
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"member": [
"zone-edge1"
]
},
"source-user": {
"member": [
"any"
]
},
"application": {
"member": [
"email-collaboration-apps"
]
},
"service": {
"member": [
"application-default"
]
},
"hip-profiles": {
"member": [
"any"
]
},
"action": "allow",
"category": {
"member": [
"any"
]
},
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"source": {
"member": [
"any"
]
},
"destination": {
"member": [
"any"
]
}
}
]
}’
|
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128
7.14Self-Tests
The TOE performs a suite of FIPS self-tests during power-up and on demand (via reboot). If any
of the self-test fails, the TOE will enter maintenance mode (i.e., no longer in the evaluated
configuration). The TOE enters an error state and outputs an error indicator. The TOE doesn’t
perform any cryptographic operations while in the error state. All data output from the TOE is
inhibited when an error state exists. If this occurs, please re-boot the appliance. If the self-tests
continue to fail, please contact Palo Alto Networks Support (e-mail
support@paloaltonetworks.com or call them at 866-898-9087).
The following possible failures can be detected during the self-test are:
• Firmware Integrity failure [power-up | schedule]
• Known Answer Test (KAT) failures [power-up | schedule]
• Entropy Health Test [power-up | schedule]
The actual output of the FIPS power-up self-tests can only be viewed in the system logs.
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129
The FIPS power-up self-tests that are executed are provided below:
• AES Encrypt Known Answer Test
• AES Decrypt Known Answer Test
• AES GCM Encrypt Known Answer Test
• AES GCM Decrypt Known Answer Test
• AES CCM Encrypt Known Answer Test
• AES CCM Decrypt Known Answer Test
• RSA Sign Known Answer Test
• RSA Verify Known Answer Test
• RSA Encrypt/Decrypt Known Answer Test
• ECDSA Sign Known Answer Test
• ECDSA Verify Known Answer Test
• HMAC-SHA-1 Known Answer Test
• HMAC-SHA-256 Known Answer Test
• HMAC-SHA-384 Known Answer Test
• HMAC-SHA-512 Known Answer Test
• SHA-1 Known Answer Test
• SHA-256 Known Answer Test
• SHA-384 Known Answer Test
• SHA-512 Known Answer Test
• DRBG SP800-90A Known Answer Tests
• SP 800-90A Section 11.3 Health Tests
• DH Known Answer Test
• ECDH Known Answer Test
• SP 800-135 KDF Known Answer Tests
|
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• Firmware Integrity Test – verified with HMAC-SHA-256 and ECDSA P-256. If the
calculated result does not equal the previously generated result, the software/firmware
test shall fail.
|
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0
|
Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP
Brought to you by
• Differentiate between “good”
and “bad” applications
• Identify evasive techniques used
by applications
• Implement effective application
and network controls
Learn to:
Next-Generation Firewalls
Making Everything Easier!™
Open the book and find:
• How Enterprise 2.0
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risks for your organization
• Why traditional firewalls
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• How next-generation
firewalls stand apart from
other security solutions
• What features and
capabilities you need
in your firewall
Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP, has worked in
information security for more than 20 years.
He is the coauthor of CISSP For Dummies and
a dozen other titles. He is also a Palo Alto
Networks customer and liked it so much he
bought the company — well, he’s not that
rich (yet) — but he did write this book! ISBN 978-0-470-93955-0
Book not for resale
Go to Dummies.com®
for videos, step-by-step examples,
how-to articles, or to shop!
Traditional firewalls haven’t changed much over
the past 15 years and can no longer protect your
network. That’s because they were never designed
to control all of the evasive, port-hopping, and
encrypted Internet applications that are so
common today. You’ve added intrusion prevention,
proxies, antivirus, URL filtering, and much more —
all to no avail. It’s time to fix the firewall!
• What Enterprise 2.0 applications are — and
how they create new risks and challenges for
your organization
• Why traditional firewalls are ineffective
against today’s threats — and why quick
fixes and add-on capabilities don’t work
• What a next-generation firewall is — what
it isn’t, and why you need one (or more)
• How to get the most out of your firewall — by
creating effective policies, asking the right
questions, and segmenting your network for
optimum performance
• Discover advanced features and capabilities—
that make next-generation firewalls a powerful
solution to protect your network and regain
control
Regain control of the applications
and users on your network!
|
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|
1
|
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks™ is the network security company. Its nextgeneration firewalls enable unprecedented visibility and
granular policy control of applications and content — by user,
not just IP address — at up to 10Gbps with no performance
degradation. Based on patent-pending App-ID™ technology,
Palo Alto Networks firewalls accurately identify and control
applications — regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic, or SSL
encryption — and scan content to stop threats and prevent
data leakage. Enterprises can for the first time embrace Web 2.0
and maintain complete visibility and control, while significantly
reducing total cost of ownership through device consolidation.
For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.
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2
|
Next-Generation
Firewalls
FOR
DUMmIES‰
by Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP
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Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise,
except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the
prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be
addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ
07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference
for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade
dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the
United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Palo Alto
Networks and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Palo Alto
Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing,
Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE
NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT
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FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS
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MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN
THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
ISBN: 978-0-470-93955-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Business Development
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|
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
About This Book ........................................................................ 1
Foolish Assumptions ................................................................. 2
How This Book Is Organized .................................................... 2
Chapter 1: Understanding the Evolution
of Network Security ..................................................... 2
Chapter 2: Defining the Application
and Threat Landscape................................................. 2
Chapter 3: Recognizing the Challenges of Legacy
Security Infrastructures .............................................. 2
Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with
Next-Generation Firewalls ........................................... 3
Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls ......... 3
Chapter 6: Ten Evaluation Criteria for
Next-Generation Firewalls ........................................... 3
Glossary ............................................................................ 3
Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 3
Where to Go from Here ............................................................. 4
Chapter 1: Understanding the Evolution
of Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Why Legacy Firewalls Are No Longer Effective ...................... 6
Data Leakage Is a Problem ........................................................ 7
Compliance Is Not Optional ...................................................... 9
Chapter 2: Defining the Application and
Threat Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Applications Are Not All Good or All Bad ............................. 12
Applications Are Evasive ........................................................ 17
Threats Are Coming Along for the Ride ................................ 21
Chapter 3: Recognizing the Challenges of Legacy
Security Infrastructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Whatever Happened to the Firewall? .................................... 26
Port-based firewalls have poor vision ........................ 27
Bolt-on functionality is fundamentally flawed ........... 28
Firewall “helpers” don’t help........................................ 29
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|
Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies iv
Traditional IPS Is a Poor Match for Today’s Threats .......... 30
UTM Only Makes What Is Broken Cheaper ........................... 33
It’s Time to Fix the Firewall .................................................... 33
Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with
Next-Generation Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
The Next-Generation Firewall ................................................. 35
Application identification ............................................. 36
User identification ......................................................... 39
Content identification ................................................... 39
Policy control ................................................................. 42
High-performance architecture ................................... 42
What a Next-Generation Firewall Isn’t ................................... 44
Benefits of Next-Generation Firewalls ................................... 46
Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls . . . . .47
Safe Enablement through Smart Policies .............................. 48
Employee controls ......................................................... 49
Desktop controls............................................................ 50
Network controls ........................................................... 51
Defining Your Requirements and Developing an RFP ......... 52
Deployment Flexibility Matters .............................................. 56
Addressing Mobile and Remote Users .................................. 57
Chapter 6: Ten Evaluation Criteria for
Next-Generation Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
Identify Applications, Not Ports ............................................. 59
Identify Users, Not IP Addresses............................................ 60
Identify Content, Not Packets ................................................. 61
Visibility .................................................................................... 62
Control....................................................................................... 63
Performance ............................................................................. 63
Flexibility ................................................................................... 63
Reliability .................................................................................. 64
Scalability .................................................................................. 64
Manageability ........................................................................... 64
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
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Introduction
With new Internet-based threats being launched faster
than ever and increasingly targeting “firewall friendly”
applications and application-layer vulnerabilities, traditional
firewalls are becoming less and less capable of adequately
protecting corporate networks.
The rapid evolution of applications and threats, coupled with
the relative stagnation of traditional security technologies,
has resulted in a loss of visibility and control for IT organizations attempting to keep their enterprises secure.
Despite their best efforts to restore application visibility and
control, and regain the advantage in protecting their networks
and information assets, most organizations remain stymied.
Lacking a truly innovative solution, they turn to specialized
single-purpose security appliances that fail to fully address
today’s security challenges, and are not part of a comprehensive security strategy.
The resulting appliance sprawl is costly and complex —
characteristics that are never desirable in a solution. But in
today’s tough economic climate when organizations must do
more with less — both money and IT staff — complex and
costly fixes are entirely unacceptable.
Instead, an entirely new and innovative approach to network
security is needed — it’s time to reinvent the firewall!
About This Book
This book provides an in-depth overview of next-generation
firewalls. It examines the evolution of network security,
the rise of Enterprise 2.0 applications and their associated
threats, the shortcomings of traditional firewalls, and the
advanced capabilities found in next-generation firewalls.
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2 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Foolish Assumptions
This book assumes you have a working knowledge of network
security. As such, it is written primarily for technical readers
who are evaluating potential new solutions to address their
organizations’ security challenges.
How This Book Is Organized
This book consists of six short chapters and an appendix.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the chapters to pique your curiosity!
Chapter 1: Understanding the
Evolution of Network Security
We begin with a look at the role that firewalls traditionally
play in network security, as well as some of the challenges of
network security today.
Chapter 2: Defining the Application
and Threat Landscape
Chapter 2 describes several trends affecting application development and their usage in enterprises. You find out about
the business benefits, as well as the security risks associated
with various applications, and how new threats are exploiting
“accessibility features” in Enterprise 2.0 applications.
Chapter 3: Recognizing the
Challenges of Legacy
Security Infrastructures
Chapter 3 explains why traditional port-based firewalls and
intrusion prevention systems are inadequate for protecting
enterprises against new and emerging threats.
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Introduction 3
Chapter 4: Solving the Problem
with Next-Generation Firewalls
Chapter 4 takes a deep dive into the advanced features and
capabilities of next-generation firewalls. You learn what a
next-generation firewall is, what it isn’t, and how it can benefit
your organization.
Chapter 5: Deploying NextGeneration Firewalls
Chapter 5 explains the importance of security policies and
controls, and the role of next-generation firewalls in implementing those policies and controls. You also get some help
defining specific technical requirements for your organization,
and planning the deployment of a next-generation firewall on
your network.
Chapter 6: Ten Evaluation Criteria
for Next-Generation Firewalls
Here, in that familiar For Dummies Part of Tens format, we
present ten features to look for and criteria to consider when
choosing a next-generation firewall.
Glossary
And, just in case you get stumped on a technical term or
abbreviation here or there, we include a glossary to help you
sort through it all!
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, we occasionally use icons to call
attention to important information that is particularly worth
noting. Sadly, James Dean (the pop icon, not the sausage guy)
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4 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
isn’t available to point this information out for you, so we do
it instead!
This icon points out information or a concept that may well
be worth committing to memory, so don’t make like a wise
guy and fuggedaboutit — instead, make wise and don’t ever
forget it!
You won’t find a map of the human genome or the secret to
cold fusion here (or maybe you will, hmm), but if you’re seeking to attain the seventh level of NERD-vana, take note! This
icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon.
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the book, please take
care of your writers. Seriously, this icon points out helpful
suggestions and useful nuggets of information that may just
save you some time and headaches.
The Surgeon General has determined . . . well okay, it’s actually nothing that hazardous. Still, this icon points out potential
pitfalls and easily confused concepts.
Where to Go from Here
It’s been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step. Well, at 72 pages, reading this book is more like
a quick — but informative — jaunt across your living room!
Don’t worry about missing the plot, or spoiling the ending.
Each chapter in this book is written to stand on its own, so
feel free to start wherever you’d like and jump ahead to the
chapters that interest you most. Of course, if you’re a little
more of a traditionalist, you could just turn the page and start
at the beginning!
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Chapter 1
Understanding
the Evolution of
Network Security
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding why port-based firewalls have become obsolete
▶ Addressing the data leakage problem
▶ Achieving regulatory compliance
Just as antivirus software has been a cornerstone of PC
security since the early days of the Internet, firewalls have
been the cornerstone of network security.
Today’s application and threat landscape renders traditional
port-based firewalls largely ineffective at protecting corporate
networks and sensitive data. Applications are the conduit
through which everything flows — a vector for our business
and personal lives — along with their associated benefits and
risks. Such risks include new and emerging threats, data leakage, and noncompliance.
This chapter explains how traditional firewalls operate, why
they cannot meet today’s application and threat challenges,
and how data leakage and compliance issues are defining network security and the need for a better firewall.
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6 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Why Legacy Firewalls Are
No Longer Effective
A firewall, at its most basic level, controls traffic flow between
a trusted network (such as a corporate LAN) and an untrusted
or public network (such as the Internet). The most commonly
deployed firewalls today are port-based (or packet filtering)
firewalls, or some variation (such as stateful inspection) of
this basic type of firewall. These firewalls are popular because
they are relatively simple to operate and maintain, generally
inexpensive, have good throughput, and have been the prevalent design for more than two decades.
In the rapid pace of the Internet Age, nearly two decades
means the basic technology behind port-based firewalls is
medieval. In fact, network security is often likened to the Dark
Ages — a network perimeter is analogous to the walls of a
castle, with a firewall controlling access — like a drawbridge.
And like a drawbridge that is either up or down, a port-based
firewall is limited to just two options for controlling network
traffic: allow or block.
Port-based firewalls (and their variants) use source/destination IP addresses and TCP/UDP port information to determine
whether or not a packet should be allowed to pass between
networks or network segments. The firewall inspects the first
few bytes of the TCP header in an IP packet to determine the
application protocol — for example, SMTP (port 25), and
HTTP (port 80).
Most firewalls are configured to allow all traffic originating
from the trusted network to pass through to the untrusted
network, unless it is explicitly blocked by a rule. For example,
the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) might be
explicitly blocked to prevent certain network information
from being inadvertently transmitted to the Internet. This
would be accomplished by blocking UDP ports 161 and 162,
regardless of the source or destination IP address.
Static port control is relatively easy. Stateful inspection firewalls address dynamic applications that use more than one
well-defined port (such as FTP ports 20 and 21). When a computer or server on the trusted network originates a session
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Chapter 1: Understanding the Evolution of Network Security 7
with a computer or server on the untrusted network, a connection is established. On stateful packet inspection firewalls,
a dynamic rule is temporarily created to allow responses
or replies from the computer or server on the untrusted
network. Otherwise, return traffic needs to be explicitly permitted, or access rules need to be manually created on the
firewall (which usually isn’t practical).
All of this works well as long as everyone plays by the rules.
Unfortunately, the rules are more like guidelines and not
everyone using the Internet is nice!
The Internet now accounts for the majority of traffic traversing enterprise networks. And it’s not just Web surfing. The
Internet has spawned a new generation of applications being
accessed by network users for both personal and business
use. Many of these applications help improve user and business productivity, while other applications consume large
amounts of bandwidth, pose needless security risks, and
increase business liabilities — for example, data leaks and
compliance — both of which are addressed in the following sections. And many of these applications incorporate
“accessibility” techniques, such as using nonstandard ports,
port-hopping, and tunneling, to evade traditional port-based
firewalls.
IT organizations have tried to compensate for deficiencies
in traditional port-based firewalls by surrounding them with
proxies, intrusion prevention systems, URL filtering, and other
costly and complex devices, all of which are equally ineffective in today’s application and threat landscape.
Data Leakage Is a Problem
Large scale, public exposures of sensitive or private data
are far too common. Numerous examples of accidental and
deliberate data leakage continue to regularly make nightmare
headlines, exposing the loss of tens of thousands of credit
card numbers by a major retailer, or social security numbers
leaking by a government agency, health care organization, or
employer. For example, in December 2008, an improperly configured and prohibited peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application exposed a database of 24,000 U.S. Army soldiers’ personal
information to the public domain. Unfortunately, such incidents
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8 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
are not isolated: the U.S. Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center,
a U.S. Government contractor working on Marine One, and
Pfizer Corporation all had earlier high-profile breaches of a
similar nature. In all of these cases, sensitive data was leaked
via an application that was expressly prohibited by policy but
not adequately enforced with technology.
Data leakage prevention (DLP) technologies are being touted
as a panacea and have captured the attention of many IT
organizations. Unfortunately, given the scope, size, and distributed nature of most enterprise datasets, just discovering
where the data is and who owns it is an insurmountable challenge. Adding to this challenge, questions regarding access
control, reporting, data classification, data at-rest versus data
in-transit, desktop and server agents, and encryption abound.
As a result, many DLP initiatives within organizations progress slowly and eventually falter.
Many data loss prevention solutions attempt to incorporate too
much of the information security function (and even include
elements of storage management!) into an already unwieldy
offering. Needless to say, this broadened scope adds complexity, time, and expense — both in hard costs and in staff time.
Thus, DLP technologies are often cumbersome, ironically
incomplete (focusing mostly on the Web and e-mail), and for
many organizations — overkill . . . not to mention expensive!
Furthermore, many of the recent breaches caused by
unauthorized and improperly configured P2P file sharing
applications wouldn’t have been prevented by the typical
implementation of DLP technologies on the market today —
because control of applications isn’t addressed.
Some organizations will have to go through the effort of a
large-scale DLP implementation — which should include data
discovery, classification, and cataloging. But for most organizations, controlling the applications most often used to leak
sensitive data and stopping unauthorized transmission of private or sensitive data, such as credit card and social security
numbers, is all that is needed. Exerting that control at trust
boundaries (the network perimeter) is ideal — whether the
demarcation point is between inside and outside or internal
users and internal resources in the datacenter. The firewall
sits in the perfect location, seeing all traffic traversing different networks and network segments. Unfortunately, legacy
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Chapter 1: Understanding the Evolution of Network Security 9
port- and protocol-based firewalls can’t do anything about any
of this — being ignorant of applications, users, and content.
To effectively address data leakage with a firewall solution,
organizations should
✓ Gain control over the applications on their network —
thus limiting the avenues of data leakage
✓ Scan the applications they do want on their networks, for
sensitive or private data
✓ Understand which users are initiating these application
transactions and why
✓ Implement appropriate control policies and technology
to prevent accidental or intentional data leakage
If enterprises could control the flow of sensitive or private
data at the perimeter, many of the data loss incidents that regularly make the news could be avoided. Unfortunately, legacy
security infrastructures, with traditional firewalls as the cornerstone, are ill-equipped to provide this functionality.
Compliance Is Not Optional
With more than 400 regulations worldwide mandating
information security and data protection requirements,
organizations everywhere are struggling to attain and maintain compliance. Examples of these regulations include
HIPAA, FISMA, FINRA, and GLBA in the U.S., and the EU Data
Protection Act (DPA) in Europe.
Ironically, perhaps the most far-reaching, most effective, and
best-known compliance requirement today isn’t even a government regulation. The Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard (PCI DSS) was created by the major payment card
brands (American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and others) to
protect companies, banks, and consumers from identity theft
and fraudulent card use. And as economies rely more and
more on payment card transactions, the risks of lost cardholder data will only increase, making any effort to protect
the data critical — whether compliance-driven or otherwise.
PCI DSS is applicable to any business that transmits, processes, or stores payment cards (such as credit cards or debit
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10 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
cards), regardless of the number or amount of transactions
processed.
Companies that do not comply can be subject to stiff penalties
including fines of up to $25,000 per month for minor violations,
fines of up to $500,000 for violations that result in actual lost or
stolen financial data, and loss of card-processing authorization
(making it almost impossible for a business to operate).
While compliance requirements are almost entirely based
on information-security best practices, it is important to
remember that security and compliance aren’t the same thing.
Regardless of whether or not a business is PCI compliant, a
data breach can be very costly. According to research conducted by Forrester, the estimated per record cost of a breach
(including fines, cleanup, lost opportunities, and other costs)
ranges from $90 (for a low profile, nonregulated company) to
$305 (for a high-profile, highly regulated company).
Security and compliance are related, but they are not the
same thing!
PCI DSS version 1.2 consists of 12 general requirements
and more than 200 specific requirements. Of the 12 general
requirements, the following specifically address firewall and
firewall-related requirements:
✓ Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data.
✓ Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software or programs.
✓ Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems
and applications.
✓ Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by
business need-to-know.
✓ Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data.
✓ Appendix F: To use network segmentation to reduce
PCI DSS scope, an entity must isolate systems that store,
process, or transmit cardholder data from the rest of the
network.
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Chapter 2
Defining the Application
and Threat Landscape
In This Chapter
▶ Identifying applications as good, bad, or good and bad
▶ Understanding accessibility tactics
▶ Recognizing the speed and sophistication of today’s threats
Network security used to be relatively simple — everything was more or less black and white — either clearly
bad or clearly good. Business applications constituted good
traffic that should be allowed, while pretty much everything
else constituted bad traffic that should be blocked.
Problems with this approach today include the fact that applications have become
✓ Increasingly “gray” — classifying types of applications as
good or bad is not a straightforward exercise.
✓ Increasingly evasive.
✓ The predominant vector of today’s cybercriminals and
threat developers.
This chapter explores the evolving application and threat
landscape, the blurring distinction between user- and businessapplications, and the strategic nature of many of these applications (and their associated risks) for businesses today.
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12 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Applications Are Not
All Good or All Bad
Over the past decade, the application landscape has changed
dramatically for organizations. Corporate productivity
applications have been joined by a plethora of personal
and consumer-oriented applications. This convergence of
corporate infrastructures and personal technologies is being
driven by a trend known as consumerization which, according to Gartner, will be the most significant trend affecting IT
through 2015.
The process of consumerization occurs as users increasingly find
personal technology and applications that are more powerful or
capable, more convenient, less expensive, quicker to install, and
easier to use, than corporate IT solutions. These user-centric
“lifestyle” applications and technologies enable individuals to
improve their personal efficiency, handle their non-work affairs,
and maintain online personas, among other things. Common
examples include Google Docs, instant messaging applications,
and Web-based e-mail. Enterprise 2.0 applications highlight the
dissolution of the traditional distinctions between business and
personal use. More often than not, the same applications used
for social interaction are being used for work-related purposes.
And as the boundary between work and their personal lives
becomes less distinct, users are practically demanding that these
same tools be available to them in their workplaces.
Catering to this demand, technology vendors and developers
enjoy vast economies of scale and the pervasive benefits of
viral marketing. Selling small quantities to literally hundreds
of millions of individual users, rather than large quantities to
relatively few corporate customers means
✓ Shorter buying cycles — a purchase is a personal choice
rather than a corporate decision.
✓ Focusing on functionality and ease of use, rather than
standards and interoperability.
✓ Constantly and rapidly improving products, based on
large-scale and virtually instantaneous user feedback.
The adoption of Enterprise 2.0 applications is being driven by
users, not by IT. The ease with which they can be accessed,
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 13
combined with the fact that today’s knowledge workers are
accustomed to using them, points toward a continuation of the
consumerization trend. Defined by Appopedia (www.theapp
gap.com) as “a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise,”
Enterprise 2.0 applications have taken the world by storm.
What started as a few applications that were mostly focused
on searching, linking, and tagging, rapidly shifted to a horde
of applications that enable authoring, networking, and sharing.
Examples of first-generation Enterprise 2.0 applications include
✓ Wikis such as Socialtext
✓ Blogging tools such as Blogger
✓ RSS tools such as NewsGator
✓ Enterprise bookmarking and tagging tools such as Cogenz
✓ Messaging tools such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
Examples of second-generation Enterprise 2.0 applications
include
✓ Content management tools such as SharePoint
✓ Browser-based file sharing tools such as MegaUpload.com
✓ Complex social networks such as Facebook
✓ Publishing tools such as YouTube
✓ Unified messaging tools such as Skype
✓ Posting tools such as Twitter and social bookmarking
To gain an appreciation for how rapidly the innovation and adoption cycles have accelerated for these applications, consider the
following (based on an analysis of 347 organizations worldwide):
✓ In less than 18 months since its inception in April 2008,
Facebook chat has overtaken Yahoo! IM and AIM inside
enterprises, further demonstrating how much stickier
Enterprise 2.0 applications are over Enterprise 1.0
applications.
✓ Between March 2009 and September 2009, the enterprise
penetration of Google Docs has increased from 33 percent to 82 percent.
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14 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
✓ In that same time period, Twitter use in enterprises
jumped 252 percent in terms of sessions and 775 percent
in terms of bandwidth.
Unsure of how to leverage the consumerization trend in their
business processes, many organizations either implicitly
allow these personal technologies and Enterprise 2.0 applications by simply ignoring their use in the workplace, or
explicitly prohibit their use, but are then unable to effectively
enforce such policies with traditional firewalls and security
technologies. Neither of these two approaches is ideal, and
both incur inherent risks for the organization. In addition to
lost productivity, adverse issues for the organization include
✓ Creating a subculture of back-channel or underground
workflow processes that are critical to the businesses’
operations, but are known only to a few users and fully
dependent on personal technologies and applications.
✓ Introducing new risks to the entire networking and computing infrastructure, due to the presence of unknown,
and therefore unaddressed and unpatched, vulnerabilities, as well as threats that target normal application and
user behavior — whether a vulnerability exists in the
application or not.
✓ Being exposed to non-compliance penalties for organizations that are subject to regulatory requirements such as
HIPAA, FINRA, and PCI DSS.
✓ Having employees circumvent controls with external
proxies, encrypted tunnels, and remote desktop applications, making it difficult, if not impossible, for security
and risk managers to see the risks they’re attempting to
manage.
The challenge is not only the growing diversity of the applications, but also the inability to clearly and consistently classify
them as good or bad. Although many are clearly good (low
risk, high reward), and others are clearly bad (high risk, low
reward), most are somewhere in between. Moreover, the end
of the spectrum that these applications fall on can vary from
one scenario to the next and from user to user or from session to session.
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 15
For example, using a social networking application to share
product documentation with a prospective customer would
be “good” (medium risk, high reward), while using the same
application to forward details of an upcoming release to a
“friends list” that includes employees of a competitor would
be “not so good” (high risk, no reward).
Indeed, many organizations now use a variety of social networking applications to support a wide range of legitimate
business functions, such as recruiting, research and development, marketing, and customer support — and many are
even inclined to allow the use of lifestyle applications, to
some extent, as a way to provide an “employee friendly”
work environment and improve morale.
Enabling Facebook usage while
protecting the business
Facebook is rapidly extending its
influence from the personal world to
the corporate world, as employees
use these applications to get their
jobs done. At the same time, many
organizations are looking at the
nearly 500 million Facebook users as
an opportunity to conduct research,
execute targeted marketing, gather
product feedback, and increase
awareness. The end result is that
Facebook can help organizations
improve their bottom line.
However, formally enabling the use
of Facebook introduces several challenges to organizations. Many organizations are unaware of how heavily
Facebook is being used, or for what
purpose. In most cases, policies governing specific usage are nonexistent or unenforceable. Finally, users
tend to be too trusting, operating in
a “click now, think later” mentality
which introduces significant security risks.
Like any application that is brought
into the enterprise by end-users,
blindly allowing Facebook may
result in propagation of threats, loss
of data, and damage to the corporate reputation. Blindly blocking
Facebook is also an inappropriate
response because it may play an
important role in the business and
may force users to find alternative means of accessing it (such as
proxies, circumvention tools, and
others). Organizations should follow
a systematic process to develop,
enable, and enforce appropriate
Facebook usage policies while
simultaneously protecting network
resources.
(continued)
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16 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
1. Find out who’s using Facebook.
There are many cases where
there may already be a “corporate” Facebook presence established by marketing or sales, so
it is critical that IT determine
which social networking applications are in use, who is using
them, and the associated business objectives. By meeting
with the business groups and
discussing the common company goals, IT can use this step
to move away from the image of
“always saying no” and towards
the role of business enabler.
2. Develop a corporate Facebook
policy. Once Facebook usage
patterns are determined, organizations should engage in
discussions regarding what
should and should not be said
or posted about the company,
the competition, and the appropriate language. Educating
users on the security risks associated with Facebook is another
important element to encouraging usage for business purposes.
Organizations need to change
the “click now, think later”
mentality to a “think now, then
click” attitude to better protect
both users and the organization
from potential threats carried by
social networks.
3. Use technology to monitor and
enforce policy. The outcome
of each of these discussions
should be documented with an
explanation of how IT will apply
security policies to safely and
securely enable use of Facebook
within enterprise environments.
Documenting and enforcing a social
networking usage policy can help
organizations improve their bottom
line while boosting employee morale.
An added benefit is that it can help
bridge the chasm that commonly
exists between the IT department
and business groups.
(continued)
Research from McKinsey and Company and the Association
for Information and Image Management (AIIM) shows that
companies are seeing measurable benefits from the use of
Enterprise 2.0 applications and technologies. Specific benefits
include an increased ability to share ideas, more rapid access
to knowledge experts, and a reduction in travel, operations,
and communications costs. For example, you can now make
ticket reservations on Delta Airlines’ Facebook page!
Today’s network security solutions, therefore, must be able
not only to distinguish one type of application from the next,
but also to account for other contextual variables surrounding its use and to vary the resulting action that will be taken
accordingly.
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 17
Applications Are Evasive
Although “distinguishing one type of application from the
next” sounds simple, it really isn’t — for a number of reasons.
In order to maximize their accessibility and use, many applications are designed from the outset to circumvent traditional
firewalls, by dynamically adjusting how they communicate.
For the end-user, this means an application can be used from
anywhere, at anytime. Common tactics include
✓ Port hopping, where ports/protocols are randomly
shifted over the course of a session
✓ Use of non-standard ports, such as running Yahoo!
Messenger over TCP port 80 (HTTP) instead of the standard TCP port for Yahoo! Messenger (5050)
✓ Tunneling within commonly used services, such as
when peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing or an instant messenger (IM) client like Meebo is running over HTTP
✓ Hiding within SSL encryption, which masks the application traffic, for example, over TCP port 443 (HTTPS)
The Spring 2010 Application Usage and Risk Report by Palo
Alto Networks found that out of 741 unique applications analyzed, 65 percent were designed for accessibility using these
techniques. Figure 2-1 shows the comparative growth of applications using accessibility features over the past 18 months
(covered by three semi-annual Application Usage and Risk
Reports).
Many standard client-server applications are being redesigned
to take advantage of Web technologies. Figure 2-1 shows that
30 percent (149) of the accessibility-focused applications
analyzed in the report are client-server-based, a fact that contradicts the notion that “accessible” applications always use
the browser. At the same time, enterprises are increasingly
embracing cloud-based Web services such as Salesforce.com,
WebEx, and Google Apps — which often initiate in a browser
but then quickly switch to more client-server behavior (rich
client, proprietary transactions, and others).
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18 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Google applications:
The epitome of Enterprise 2.0?
To a certain extent, many of the
applications that Google publishes
epitomize Enterprise 2.0 (Web 2.0
and Internet-based applications
that are used for business purposes). The Spring 2010 Application
Usage and Risk Report by Palo Alto
Networks identifies 22 Google applications that cover a wide functionality
spectrum: productivity (Google Docs,
Analytics, Calendar), social networking (Orkut), communications (Gmail,
Gtalk, Voice) and entertainment
(YouTube, Picasa). These applications were found with overwhelming
frequency in organizations participating in the study (see the following
figure).
Category and Technology Breakdown of Applications That
Port Hop, Use Port 80 or Port 443
38
27 103 11
24
29
20
11
42
36
21
14
16
11
24
20
16
0 50 100 150 200
12 1
11 2
18 3
23 6
27 10
41 13
25
25 2
32 1
1
33 10
56 16
65 17
74 13
127 16
Media
Collaboration
BusinessSystems
GeneralInternet
Networking
Spring 2010 (182)
Fall 2009 (141)
Spring 2009 (111)
Spring 2010 (112)
Fall 2009 (93)
Spring 2009 (54)
Spring 2010 (76)
Fall 2009 (64)
Spring 2009 (47)
Spring 2010 (70)
Fall 2009 (51)
Spring 2009 (40)
Spring 2010 (52)
Fall 2009 (38)
Spring 2009 (30)
Number of Applications
Client-server Browser-based Network-protocol Peer-to-peer
Figure 2-1: Comparative growth of applications with accessibility “features.”
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 19
When compared to Palo Alto
Networks’ Fall 2009 Application
Usage and Risk Report, several facts
support the trend toward increased
usage of Enterprise 2.0 applications:
✓ Google Docs consumed 55 percent more bandwidth and 42
percent more sessions on a per
organization basis.
✓ Google Calendar consumed 18
percent more bandwidth and 30
percent more sessions on a per
organization basis.
✓ Bandwidth consumption for
Google Talk Gadget shot up by
56 percent while Google Talk
dropped 76 percent. Google Talk
Gadget is a Flash-based browser
plugin that performs the same
functions as the client-server—
based Google Talk. The most significant difference is the fact that
it is browser-based and therefore easier to use in environments where desktop controls
restrict application installation
by end-users.
Frequency that Specific Google
Applications Were Detected
Spring 2010
Google
Docs
Google
Calendar
Gmail Google
Analytics
Gmail
Chat
Google
Talk
Google
Talk Gadget
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
79%
92% 95%
78%
53%
74% 81%
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20 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Finally, many new business applications also use these same
techniques to facilitate ease of operation while minimizing disruptions for customers, partners, and the organization’s own
security and operations departments. For example, RPC and
Sharepoint use port hopping because it is critical to how the
protocol or application (respectively) functions, rather than
as a means to evade detection or enhance accessibility.
Further emphasizing the fact that many applications are not
what they seem to be, the most commonly found applications
that can port-hop are a combination of business and personal
use applications (see Figure 2-2). Of these, only three are
browser-based (Sharepoint, Mediafire, and Ooyla); the others
are peer-to-peer or client-server.
Most Frequently Detected Applications
that can Hop Ports
Sharepoint iTunes MS RPC Skype BitTorrent MSN Voice Ooyla Mediafire eMule Teamviewer
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
54%
78% 77% 73%
60% 60% 55% 51%
42%
83%
Figure 2-2: Most frequently detected applications that can hop ports.
The result is that HTTP and HTTPS now account for approximately two thirds of all enterprise traffic. This is not a problem, per se, but it does exacerbate an inherent weakness of
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 21
traditional security infrastructure. Specifically, the wide
variety of higher-order applications riding on top of HTTP
and HTTPS — whether or not they actually serve a legitimate
business purpose — are practically indistinguishable for older
network security solutions. The negative impact of organizations further losing control over their network communications is clear and underlines the fact that the application
landscape has evolved dramatically.
Threats Are Coming
Along for the Ride
The increasing prevalence of application-layer attacks is
yet another disturbing trend. Threats that directly target
applications can pass right through the majority of enterprise defenses, which have historically been built to provide
network-layer protection. Threat developers exploit the same
methods (described in the previous section) to infiltrate networks that application developers utilize to promote ease of
use and widespread adoption, such as tunneling within applications. The evasion techniques built into these and many
other modern applications are being leveraged to provide
threats with “free passage” into enterprise networks. It is no
surprise, therefore, that greater than 80 percent of all new
malware and intrusion attempts are exploiting weaknesses in
applications, as opposed to weaknesses in networking components and services. Together with the implicit trust that users
place in their applications, all of these factors combine to
create a “perfect storm.” The motivation for hackers has also
shifted — from gaining notoriety to making money. The name
of the game today is information theft. Consequently, it is no
longer in a hacker’s best interests to devise threats that are
“noisy” or that are relatively benign. To be successful, a thief
must be fast, or stealthy — or both.
For those hackers who favor speed over sophistication —
speed of initial threat generation, speed of modification, and
speed of propagation — the goal is to develop, launch, and
quickly spread new threats immediately on the heels of the
disclosure of a new vulnerability. The resulting zero-day and
near-zero-day exploits then have an increased likelihood of
success because reactive countermeasures, such as patching
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and those tools that rely on threat signatures (such as antivirus
software and intrusion prevention), are unable to keep up —
at least during the early phases of a new attack.
This speed-based approach is facilitated in large part by the
widespread availability of threat development Web sites, toolkits, and frameworks. Unfortunately, another by-product of these
resources is the ability to easily and rapidly convert “known”
threats into “unknown” threats — at least from the perspective of signature-based countermeasures. This transformation
can be accomplished either by making a minor tweak to the
code of a threat, or by adding entirely new propagation and
exploit mechanisms, thereby creating what is commonly
referred to as a blended threat.
Mariposa: How exposed are we?
On July 28, 2010, the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
announced the arrest of a Slovenian
hacker, allegedly the creator of the
“Mariposa” botnet — one of the largest criminal botnets ever discovered.
Built with a computer virus known as
“Butterfly Bot,” the Mariposa botnet
steals passwords for Web sites and
financial institutions, and is estimated to have infected as many as 8
to 12 million computers in nearly 200
countries. According to Christopher
Davis, CEO of Defence Intelligence,
it would be easier “to provide a list
of the Fortune 1000 companies that
weren’t compromised, rather than
the long list of those who were.”
Financial estimates of the damage
to networks and the actual data
stolen are still being calculated, and
although the bot’s creator has been
arrested, criminals from around the
world who purchased his bot continue to steal data from millions of
unsuspecting victims.
Mariposa spreads itself across nine
different P2P networks including
Ares, BearShare, Direct Connect,
eMule, iMesh, Kazaa, Gnutella,
BitTorrent (via LimeWire client), and
Shareaza. Essentially, for each P2P
network, there is a Mariposa foldershare feeding the bot executable.
In addition to P2P applications, MSN
Instant Messaging is also used as a
spreader. The following figure shows
the most common Mariposa spreaders found in an analysis of 363 organizations conducted by Palo Alto
Networks’ Application and Threat
Research Team.
Some more detailed analysis of the
363 organizations exposes some
sobering statistics:
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Chapter 2: Defining the Application and Threat Landscape 23
MSN
Gnutella
Ares
DirectConnect
Kazaa
Imesh
Emule
BitTorrent
10% 30% 50% 70% 90%
89%
67%
58%
54%
44%
21%
16%
Top Mariposa Spreaders Found
20%
✓ 312 (86 percent) of the organizations had at least one of the P2P
applications used by Mariposa.
✓ An average of three of the nine
P2P applications were found in
each organization.
✓ Total bandwidth consumed by
the P2P applications that are
capable of spreading Mariposa
was 17.3 terabytes or an average
of 55 gigabytes per organization.
✓ Session consumption by P2P
spreaders was 555 million or an
average of 1.8 million sessions
per organization.
✓ MSN was found in 322 of the
organizations (89 percent).
Resource consumption per organization was 2.8 gigabytes of
bandwidth and 67,400 sessions
respectively.
With MSN appearing in 89 percent
of the organizations and an average
of three P2P applications appearing in more than 85 percent of the
organizations, it is reasonable to
speculate that many organizations
are exposed.
The Mariposa botnet is a clear example of how real threats are not just
hitching a ride on many of today’s
most popular applications — they’re
racking up some serious frequent
flyer miles!
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24 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Many of today’s threats are built to run covertly on networks
and systems, quietly collecting sensitive or personal data,
and going undetected for as long as possible. This approach
helps to preserve the value of the stolen data and enables
repeated use of the same exploits and attack vectors. As
a result, threats have become increasingly sophisticated.
Rootkits, for example, have become more prevalent. These
kernel-level exploits effectively mask the presence of other
types of malware, enabling them to persistently pursue the
nefarious tasks they were designed to accomplish (such as
intercepting keystrokes).
Targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats (APTs),
such as “Aurora,” against specific organizations or individuals are another major concern. In this case, hackers often
develop customized attack mechanisms to take advantage
of the specific equipment, systems, applications, configurations, and even personnel employed in a specific organization
or at a given location, and quietly collect sensitive data over
extended periods. According to Verizon’s 2010 Data Breach
Investigations Report, 70 percent of data breaches resulted
from external agents.
The increasing speed and sophistication of threats emphasize the need for proactive countermeasures with extensive
visibility and control at the application-layer of the network
computing stack.
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Chapter 3
Recognizing the Challenges
of Legacy Security
Infrastructures
In This Chapter
▶ Inspecting weaknesses in legacy port-based firewalls
▶ Examining the shortcomings of intrusion prevention
▶ Addressing device sprawl
As the application and threat landscape has quickly
evolved, the impact within many organizations is that IT
has lost control. The inability of their existing security infrastructure to effectively distinguish good or desirable applications from those that are bad or unwanted, forces most
IT shops to take an inflexible and untenable “all-or-nothing”
approach to security, in which they either/or:
✓ Take a permissive stance — an approach that ensures
the accessibility of important applications, but also
allows unwanted applications and threats on the corporate network
✓ Just say “no” in order to maintain a high state of security,
but at the risk of limiting business agility and productivity, alienating users and business units, and creating
an underground subculture of backdoor processes to
circumvent security controls.
Instead, IT needs the capability to exert granular control and
provide in-depth protection down to the level of individual
applications, in order to confidently say “yes” to legitimate
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26 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
requests from the business and its end-users. Unfortunately,
traditional network security infrastructures have failed to
keep pace and are unable to provide this functionality.
In this chapter, you find out how the new application and
threat landscape has challenged these legacy security devices,
particularly firewalls, beyond their capability to effectively
protect today’s networks.
Whatever Happened
to the Firewall?
Have you noticed that nobody gets excited about a firewall
anymore? There was a time when the firewall was the single
most important security device in your network. So what
happened?
The answer is a bit of a cliché, but — the Internet has changed
everything! Years ago, most firewalls did a pretty good job
of controlling traffic in and out of corporate networks. That’s
because application traffic was generally well behaved. E-mail
would typically flow through port 25, FTP was assigned to
port 20, and the whole “Web surfing” was hanging, uhhh, port
80. Everybody played by the rules that “ports + protocols =
applications” and the firewall had everything under control.
Blocking a port meant blocking an application. Nice and simple.
Unfortunately, the Internet has never really been nice and
simple. And that is truer today than ever before. Today, the
Internet often accounts for 70 percent or more of the traffic
on your corporate network. And it’s not just port 80 Web surfing. Typically, 20 to 30 percent of it is encrypted SSL traffic
on port 443. Even worse, there is a plethora of new Internet
applications that insist on making their own rules. They wrap
themselves in other protocols, sneak through ports that don’t
belong to them, and bury themselves inside SSL tunnels. In
short, they just don’t play fair.
All these applications carry some inherent risk to your business. And they play host to clever new threats that can slip
through your firewall undetected. Meanwhile, your firewall
just sits there like nothing is wrong because it’s still playing
by rules that don’t exist anymore!
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Chapter 3: The Challenges of Legacy Security Infrastructures 27
Port-based firewalls
have poor vision
Because they are deployed in-line at critical network junctions,
firewalls see all traffic and, therefore, are the ideal resource
to provide granular access control. The problem, however, is
that most firewalls are “far-sighted.” They can see the general
shape of things, but not the finer details of what is actually
happening. This is because they operate by inferring the
application-layer service that a given stream of traffic is associated with, based on the port number used in the packet’s
header, and they only look at the first packet in a session to
determine the type of traffic being processed, typically to
improve performance. They rely on a convention — not a
requirement — that a given port corresponds to a given
service (for example, TCP port 80 corresponds to HTTP). As
such, they are also incapable of distinguishing between different applications that use the same port/service (see Figure 3-1).
ORACLE
SaaS Collaboration/Media
Personal Gmail
meebo
live 365.com
Joost
You Tube
facebook PartyPoker
RIGHT
NOW
Google
workday
NETSUITE
salesforce.com
LogMe In
BitTorrent
LimeWire
msn
skype
webex
Figure 3-1: Port-based firewalls can’t see or control applications
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28 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
The net result is that traditional, “port-based” firewalls have
basically gone blind. Besides being unable to account for
common evasion techniques such as port hopping, protocol
tunneling, and the use of nonstandard ports, these firewalls
simply lack the visibility and intelligence to discern which network traffic
✓ Corresponds to applications that serve a legitimate business purpose
✓ Corresponds to applications that can serve a legitimate
business purpose but, in a given instance, are being used
for unsanctioned activities
✓ Should be blocked because it includes malware or other
types of threats, even though it corresponds to legitimate business activities
On top of everything else, their control model is typically too
coarse-grained. Said firewalls can either block or allow traffic,
but offer little variation in between to craft a more appropriate response for all of the “gray” applications that enterprises
would ultimately like to support — for example, by allowing
certain functions within an application but not others, allowing but also applying traffic-shaping policies, allowing but
scanning for threats or confidential data, or allowing based on
users, groups, or time of day.
It doesn’t really help matters that the most common steps
taken to address the inadequacies of traditional firewalls have,
for all intents and purposes, been completely unsuccessful.
Bolt-on functionality is
fundamentally flawed
Many purveyors of traditional firewalls have attempted to
correct the far-sighted nature of their products by incorporating deep packet inspection (DPI) capabilities. On the surface,
adding a measure of application-layer visibility and control in
this manner appears to be a reasonable approach. However,
the boost in security effectiveness that can be achieved in most
cases is only incremental because the additional capability is
being “bolted on,” and the foundation it is being bolted on to
is weak to begin with. In other words, the new functionality is
added on rather than integrated, and the port-based firewall,
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Chapter 3: The Challenges of Legacy Security Infrastructures 29
with its complete lack of application awareness, is still used
for initial classification of all traffic. The problems and limitations this leads to include
✓ Applications that should not be on the network are
allowed onto the network.
✓ Not everything that should be inspected necessarily gets
inspected. Because the firewall is unable to accurately
classify application traffic, deciding which sessions to pass
along to the DPI engine becomes a hit-or-miss proposition.
✓ Policy management gets convoluted. Rules on how to
handle individual applications essentially get “nested”
within the DPI portion of the product — which itself is
engaged as part of a higher/outer level access control
policy.
✓ Inadequate performance forces compromises to be
made. Inefficient use of system resources and CPU and
memory intensive application-layer functionality put considerable strain on the underlying platform. To account
for this situation, administrators can only implement
advanced filtering capabilities selectively.
Firewall “helpers” don’t help
Over the years, enterprises have also tried to compensate for
their firewalls’ deficiencies by implementing a range of supplementary security solutions, often in the form of standalone
appliances. Intrusion prevention systems, antivirus gateways,
Web filtering products, and application-specific solutions —
such as a dedicated platform for instant messaging security —
are just a handful of the more popular choices. Unfortunately,
the outcome is disappointingly similar to that of the DPI
approach, with an additional twist.
Not everything that should get inspected does because these
firewall helpers either can’t see all of the traffic, rely on the
same port- and protocol-based classification scheme that has
failed the legacy firewall, or only provide coverage for a limited set of applications. Policy management is an even greater
problem given that access control rules and inspection requirements are spread among several consoles and involve multiple
policy models. And performance is still an issue as well, at least
in terms of having a relatively high aggregate latency.
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30 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Then comes the kicker: device sprawl. As one “solution” after
another is added to the network, the device count, degree of
complexity, and total cost of ownership all continue to rise.
Capital costs for the products themselves and all of the supporting infrastructure that is required are joined by a substantial
collection of recurring operational expenditures, including support/maintenance contracts, content subscriptions, and facilities
costs (power, cooling, and floor space) — not to mention an
array of “soft” costs such as those pertaining to IT productivity,
training, and vendor management. The result is an unwieldy,
ineffective, and costly endeavor that is simply not sustainable.
Traditional IPS Is a Poor Match
for Today’s Threats
Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) detect and block attacks
focused on vulnerabilities that exist in systems and applications.
Unlike Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) that focus only on alerting, IPS systems are intended to be deployed in-line to actively
block attacks as they are detected. One of the core capabilities
of an IPS is the ability to decode protocols to more accurately
apply signatures. This allows IPS signatures to be applied to
very specific portions of traffic, thereby reducing the percentage
of false positives that were often experienced with signatureonly systems. It is important to note that most IPS offerings will
use port and protocol as the first pass of traffic classification,
which, given the evasive characteristics of today’s applications,
may lead to an erroneous identification of the application. And
because IPS systems are focused mainly on attacks, they are
typically deployed in conjunction with a firewall as a separate
appliance or as a combination firewall and IPS.
IPS is designed to stop threats using a “find it and kill it”
approach. It is not designed to control applications. But even
for stopping threats, IPS has its flaws.
Given the new application and threat landscape, organizations
are also reexamining traditional intrusion prevention systems
(IPS). The major IPS vendors are struggling to differentiate
across several basic elements of IPS:
✓ Server and data center protection. There are only a
handful of detection and prevention techniques, and
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Chapter 3: The Challenges of Legacy Security Infrastructures 31
most IPS products support them all. These techniques
include protocol anomaly detection, stateful pattern
matching, statistical anomaly detection, heuristic analysis, blocking of invalid or malformed packets, and IP
defragmentation and TCP reassembly (for anti-evasion).
Most IPS vendors also use vulnerability-facing signatures
(as opposed to exploit-facing signatures) and turn off
server-to-client protection to improve performance.
✓ Research and support. This comes down to how much
actual research vendors are doing, and how quickly they
can respond to help enterprises protect against new
attacks and vulnerabilities. Much is made of the efforts of
the research teams of IPS vendors, and while there certainly are differences, much of the research is outsourced
to a few industry research stalwarts. The other aspect is
critical — regardless of who does the research — can the
vendor deliver timely updates to protect customers from
new and emerging threats?
✓ Performance. Organizations are clearly sensitized to
IPS performance issues. A recent Infonetics study cited
the introduction of traffic/application latency and bandwidth/performance as major concerns causing enterprises to deploy “out-of-band” IPS. Clearly, being able to
keep up with enterprise expectations for throughput and
latency is top of mind for many customers.
As defenses mature, however, attackers evolve. Given that intrusion detection and prevention systems, like firewalls, are based
on legacy techniques that are relatively well-understood, new
attacks are able to exploit well-known weak spots, including
✓ Application-borne threats. Threat developers are using
applications, both as targets and as transmission vectors. Applications provide fertile ground for both methods. Some application-borne threats are well understood
(for example, many of the threats that move across social
networks — Koobface, Boface, or Fbaction) — others are
not (such as Mariposa, using MSN Messenger and P2P
file sharing applications to spread). Regardless, attackers
find it far easier to piggyback on applications, and start
their attack with the client.
✓ Encrypted threat vectors. The other important technique
that threats employ is encryption. While security researchers have warned for years that encryption can be used by
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32 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
various threats, encrypted attacks still need a conduit —
enter user-centric applications. Users are easily duped
into clicking on encrypted links (too many users think that
HTTPS means “safe”), which can send encrypted threats
sailing through enterprise defenses. This is increasingly
simple on social networks, where the level of trust is
extremely high. The other closely related vector is obfuscation via compression — traditional IPS can’t decompress,
and thus can’t scan compressed content.
A common theme here is the level of control needed to prevent
these newer threats — controlling applications and content,
decrypting SSL, unzipping content to look for threats — all of
which goes well beyond what IPS traditionally does. A major
limitation of IPS, despite all of the work to transition from IDS
(intrusion detection systems), is that it remains a negative
security model, and is architected as such. Put more simply,
IPS relies on a “find it and kill it” model — which doesn’t work
very well for the types of control necessary to deal with many
of these new threats that move over applications. Nor does it
lend itself to an architecture and platform capable of decrypting and classifying all traffic.
A positive security model operates by expressly allowing all
communications that are known to be benign, appropriate, or
necessary, and excluding everything else. A negative security
model operates by seeking to classify only undesirable communications and content, and employing countermeasures for
those that are known to be bad.
A word on data leaks
Some of the biggest informationsecurity news stories over the past
two years involve the leaking of confidential or sensitive organizational
data via applications (for example,
U.S. government agencies and
contractors, pharmaceuticals, and
retailers). In most cases, the applications that the data leaked across
were expressly forbidden — unfortunately, their policies couldn’t be
enforced with traditional firewalls
and IPS. Given these high-profile
security breaches, it is no wonder
that organizations are starting to
look for a better solution to help
protect against such embarrassing
incidents.
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Chapter 3: The Challenges of Legacy Security Infrastructures 33
UTM Only Makes What
Is Broken Cheaper
Unified Threat Management (UTM) devices are another new
approach to modern security challenges that are based on
traditional techniques. UTM solutions were born as security
vendors began bolting intrusion prevention and antivirus addons to their stateful firewalls in an effort to reduce the cost
of deployment. UTM products do not perform their functions
any better than stand-alone devices. Instead, they provide
convenience to the customer by integrating multiple functions into one device. Unfortunately, UTMs have a reputation
for being inaccurate, hard to manage, and performing poorly
when services are enabled, relegating them to environments
where the value of device consolidation outweighs the downside of lost functionality, manageability, or performance.
The primary advantage of the UTM solution is that it typically
does a reasonable job of addressing the issues associated
with device sprawl. Instead of having all of the “helper” countermeasures deployed as separate devices, with UTM they all
come in one physical package.
But so what? The result is really no different than the boltedon approach and, therefore, exhibits the same deficiencies.
Inadequate application classification and resulting blind spots
in the inspections that are performed remain as fundamental
problems, while performance and policy management issues
are compounded even further based on having to account for
multiple additional countermeasures instead of just one.
It’s Time to Fix the Firewall
Traditional port-based firewalls really don’t provide any value
anymore — not in a world where network boundaries are disintegrating and Internet applications are exploding.
But you already know that, which is why you’ve been forced
to make up for their glaring deficiencies with more specialized
appliances — intrusion prevention systems, proxies, antivirus,
anti-spyware, URL filtering, and more. Sure, these tools add
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34 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
some incremental value, but it’s getting harder to justify their
additional cost and complexity — especially during challenging economic times.
More security appliances don’t necessarily mean a more
secure environment. In fact, the complexity and inconsistency
associated with such an approach can actually be a detriment
to your organization’s security.
In a February 2009 interview with Network World magazine,
Craig Shumard, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at
Cigna, referred to the growing stack of security products in
his organization as “unsustainable” and likened it to the “leaning tower of Pisa,” saying “we can’t continue to operate 15 to
25, or more, security products . . . we [can’t] continue to just
add new security products to the environment and expect
that we will use them effectively.” Clearly, it’s a strategy that
does not scale. More importantly, none of these additional
products give you the visibility and control you need over the
applications running on your network.
It’s time to address the core problem. It’s time to fix the firewall! After all, the firewall sits at the most critically important
place in the network, and really should be that centralized
point of visibility and control over everything entering and
leaving the network.
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Chapter 4
Solving the Problem with
Next-Generation Firewalls
In This Chapter
▶ Identifying applications, users, and content
▶ Comparing performance between next-generation and legacy firewall
architectures
▶ Recognizing the security and business benefits of next-generation
firewalls
Network security in most enterprises is fragmented and
broken, exposing them to unwanted business risks and
ever-rising costs. Traditional network security solutions have
failed to keep pace with changes to applications, threats, and
the networking landscape. Furthermore, the remedies put
forth to compensate for their deficiencies have, for the most
part, proven ineffective. It is time to reinvent network security.
This chapter is about next-generation firewalls (NGFWs): what
a next-generation firewall is, what it isn’t, and how it can benefit your organization.
The Next-Generation Firewall
To restore the firewall as the cornerstone of enterprise
network security, next-generation firewalls “fix the problem
at its core.” Starting with a blank slate, next-generation firewalls classify traffic by the application’s identity in order to
enable visibility and control of all types of applications —
including Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and legacy — running on
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36 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
enterprise networks. The essential functional requirements
for an effective next-generation firewall include the ability to:
✓ Identify applications regardless of port, protocol, evasive
techniques, or SSL encryption before doing anything else
✓ Provide visibility of and granular, policy-based control
over applications, including individual functions
✓ Accurately identify users and subsequently use identity
information as an attribute for policy control
✓ Provide real-time protection against a wide array of
threats, including those operating at the application layer
✓ Integrate, not just combine, traditional firewall and network intrusion prevention capabilities
✓ Support multi-gigabit, in-line deployments with negligible
performance degradation
Typical capabilities of traditional firewalls include packet
filtering, network- and port-address translation (NAT), stateful
inspection, and virtual private network (VPN) support. Typical
intrusion prevention capabilities include vulnerability- and
threat-facing signatures, and heuristics.
The key to NGFWs is the ability to do everything a traditional
firewall does with the advanced capabilities that combine
innovative identification technologies, high-performance, and
additional foundational features to yield an enterprise-class
solution.
Application identification
Establishing port and protocol is an important first step in
application identification but, by itself, is insufficient. Robust
application identification and inspection enables granular
control of the flow of sessions through a firewall based on the
specific applications that are being used, instead of just relying on the underlying set of often indistinguishable network
communication services (see Figure 4-1).
Positive application identification is the traffic classification engine at the heart of NGFWs. It requires a multi-factor
approach to determine the identity of applications on the
network, regardless of port, protocol, encryption, or evasive
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Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with Next-Generation Firewalls 37
tactics. Application identification techniques used in NGFWs
(see Figure 4-2) include
✓ Application protocol detection and decryption.
Determines the application protocol (for example, HTTP)
and, if SSL is in use, decrypts the traffic so that it can be
analyzed further. Traffic is reencrypted after all the identification technologies have had an opportunity to operate.
✓ Application protocol decoding. Determines whether the
initially detected application protocol is the “real one,”
or if it is being used as a tunnel to hide the actual application (for example, Yahoo! Instant Messenger might be
inside HTTP).
✓ Application signatures. Context-based signatures look
for unique properties and transaction characteristics to
correctly identify the application regardless of the port
and protocol being used. This includes the ability to
detect specific functions within applications (such as file
transfers within IM sessions).
SMTP Skype Yahoo!IM
Gmail WebEx
Limewire
Application-centric
Traffic Classification
Port 443 Port 80 Port 25
Figure 4-1: Application-centric traffic classification identifies specific
applications flowing across the network, irrespective of the
port and protocol in use.
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38 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
✓ Heuristics. For traffic that eludes identification by signature analysis, heuristic (or behavioral) analyses are
applied — enabling identification of any troublesome
applications, such as P2P or VoIP tools that use proprietary encryption.
webex
ORACLE
skype
meebo
You Tube
facebook
MEGAUPLOAD Google
salesforce.com
LogMe In
BitTorrent
talk
msn
Application
Protocol
Detection/
Decryption
Application
Protocol
Decoding
Application
Signature
Heuristics
Figure 4-2: NGFW techniques used to identify applications regardless of
port, protocol, evasive tactic, or SSL encryption.
Having the technology to accurately identify applications is
important, but understanding the security implications of an
application so that an informed policy decision can be made
is equally important. Look for a NGFW solution that includes
information about each application, and its behaviors and
risks, to provide IT administrators with application knowledge
such as known vulnerabilities, ability to evade detection, file
transfer capabilities, bandwidth consumption, malware transmission, and potential for misuse.
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Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with Next-Generation Firewalls 39
User identification
User identification technology links IP addresses to specific
user identities, enabling visibility and control of network
activity on a per-user basis. Tight integration with LDAP directories, such as Microsoft Active Directory (AD), supports this
objective in two ways. First, it regularly verifies and maintains
the user-to-IP address relationship using a combination of
login monitoring, end-station polling, and captive portal techniques. Next, it communicates with AD to harvest relevant
user information, such as role and group assignments. These
details are then available to:
✓ Gain visibility into who specifically is responsible for all
application, content, and threat traffic on the network
✓ Enable the use of identity as a variable within access
control policies
✓ Facilitate troubleshooting/incident response and
reportings
With user identification, IT departments get another powerful
mechanism to help control the use of applications in an intelligent manner. For example, a social networking application
that would otherwise be blocked because of its risky nature
can be enabled for individuals or groups that have a legitimate need to use it, such as the human resources department
(see Figure 4-3).
Content identification
Content identification infuses next-generation firewalls with
capabilities previously unheard of in enterprise firewalls, such
as real-time prevention of threats within permitted traffic,
control of Web surfing activities, and file and data filtering.
✓ Threat prevention. This component prevents spyware,
viruses, and vulnerabilities from penetrating the network,
regardless of the application traffic on which they ride.
• Application decoder. Pre-processes data streams
and inspects it for specific threat identifiers.
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40 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Paul
Engineering
Steve
Finance
Finance
Group
Nancy
Marketing
10.0.0.27
10.0.0.21
10.0.0.182
10.0.0.29 10.0.0
10.0.0.242
10.0.0.26 10.0.0.
10.0.0.187
10.0.0.2
10.0.0.227
Login
Monitoring
User Identification
End Station
Polling
Role
Discovery
Captive
Portal
Figure 4-3: User identification integrates enterprise directories for
user-based policies, reporting, and forensics.
• Stream-based virus and spyware scanning.
Scanning traffic as soon as the first packets of a
file are received — as opposed to waiting until the
entire file is in memory — maximizes throughput
and minimizes latency.
• Uniform threat signature format. Performance is
enhanced by avoiding the need to use separate
scanning engines for each type of threat. Viruses,
spyware, and vulnerability exploits can all be
detected in a single pass.
• Vulnerability attack protection (IPS). Robust routines for traffic normalization and defragmentation
are joined by protocol-anomaly, behavior-anomaly,
and heuristic detection mechanisms to provide protection from the widest range of both known and
unknown threats.
✓ URL filtering. Although not required, URL filtering is
another tool sometimes used to classify content. An integrated, on-box URL database allows administrators to
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Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with Next-Generation Firewalls 41
monitor and control Web surfing activities of employees
and guest users. Employed in conjunction with user identification, Web usage policies can even be set on a peruser basis, further safeguarding the enterprise from an
array of legal, regulatory, and productivity related risks.
✓ File and data filtering. Taking advantage of in-depth
application inspection, file and data filtering enables
enforcement of policies that reduce the risk of unauthorized file and data transfer. Capabilities include the ability to block files by their actual type (not based on just
their extension), and the ability to control the transfer
of sensitive data patterns such as credit card numbers.
This complements the granularity of application identification, which for many applications offers the ability
to control file transfer within an individual application
(such as IM).
With content identification, IT departments gain the ability
to stop threats, reduce inappropriate use of the Internet, and
help prevent data leaks — all without having to invest in a
pile of additional products and risk appliance sprawl (see
Figure 4-4).
DATA
CC#
SSN
Files
Vulnerability
Exploits
Viruses
Spyware
Web
Filtering
THREATS URLS
0101010101010101010
1010101010101010101
010
01
01010101010101
101010101010
0
1
01010101010101010101
10101010101010101011
01
10
101010101010101
010101010101010
1 0
Content Identification 0
Figure 4-4: Content identification unifies content scanning for threats,
confidential data, and URL filtering.
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42 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Policy control
Identifying the applications in use (application identification), who is using them (user identification), and what they
are using them for (content identification) is an important
first step in learning about the traffic traversing the network. Learning what the application does, the ports it uses,
its underlying technology, and its behavior is the next step
towards making an informed decision about how to treat
the application. Once a complete picture of usage is gained,
organizations can apply policies with a range of responses
that are more fine-grained and appropriate than simply
“allow” or “deny” — the only options available in traditional
port-based firewalls. This is made possible by the combination of application-, user-, and content identification, and
the positive security model of next-generation firewalls.
Traditional port-based firewalls have the security model, but
lack intelligence. Other security devices might have some
of the intelligence, but not the security model. Examples of
policy control options in NGFWs include
✓ Allow or deny
✓ Allow but scan for exploits, viruses, and other threats
✓ Allow based on schedule, users, or groups
✓ Decrypt and inspect
✓ Apply traffic shaping through QoS
✓ Apply policy-based forwarding
✓ Allow certain application functions
✓ Any combination of the aforementioned
High-performance architecture
Having a comprehensive suite of application awareness
and content inspection capabilities is of little value if IT
administrators are unable to fully engage them due to performance constraints. Therefore, it is important to select a
next-generation firewall that is designed from the start to
deliver high performance. The issue is not just that these
capabilities are inherently resource intensive. There’s also
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Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with Next-Generation Firewalls 43
the tremendous traffic volume confronting today’s security
infrastructure, not to mention the latency sensitivity of many
applications. Rated throughput and reasonable latency should
be sustainable under heavy loads, even when all application
and threat inspection features are engaged simultaneously —
which is the ideal configuration from a security perspective.
For traditional security products, especially those with
bolted-on capabilities, each high-level security function is
performed independently. This multi-pass approach requires
low-level packet processing routines to be repeated numerous
times. System resources are used inefficiently and significant
latency is introduced (see Figure 4-5).
L2/L3 Networking,
HA Config
Management,
Reporting
L2/L3 Networking,
HA, Config
Port/Protocolbased ID
Firewall Policy HTTP Decoder
URL Filtering
Policy
IPS Signatures
IPS Policy AV Policy
AV Signatures
IPS Decoder AV Decoder
& Proxy
Port/Protocolbased ID
Port/Protocolbased ID
Port/Protocolbased ID
L2/L3 Networking,
HA Config
Management,
Reporting
L2/L3 Networking,
HA, Config
L2/L3 Networking,
HA Config
Management,
Reporting
L2/L3 Networking,
HA, Config
L2/L3 Networking,
HA Config
Management,
Reporting
L2/L3 Networking,
HA, Config
Figure 4-5: Legacy multi-pass architectures.
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44 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
In contrast, a NGFW that uses a single-pass architecture
eliminates repetitive handling of packets, reducing the
burden placed on hardware and minimizing latency. Other
innovations, such as customized hardware architecture that
maintains separate data and control planes, help provide an
enterprise-class solution (see Figure 4-6).
Control Plane
Management
Policy Engine
App-ID User-ID
Networking
Content-ID
Single Pass
Software
Data Plane
Content
Security
Networking
Parallel
Processing
Hardware
Figure 4-6: Single-pass parallel processing architecture and separate
control and data planes provide enterprise performance.
What a Next-Generation
Firewall Isn’t
There are many network-based security products available
that perform functions similar to a next-generation firewall,
but they are not the same thing. Examples include
✓ Unified threat management (UTM). UTM appliances host
multiple security functions, such as port-based firewall
capabilities and basic intrusion prevention. UTM solutions are not typically built for high performance and are
typically adequate only in smaller environments.
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Chapter 4: Solving the Problem with Next-Generation Firewalls 45
✓ Proxy-based products. Proxies (both firewall and caching) sit between source and destination, intercepting
traffic and inspecting it by terminating the application
session and reinitiating it to the target destination. The
proxy establishes the connection with the destination,
on behalf of the client, hiding computers on the network
behind the proxy. However, only a limited number of
applications can be supported because each individual
application has to have its own proxy.
✓ Web application firewalls (WAFs). A WAF is designed
to look at Web applications, monitoring them for security issues that may arise due to possible coding errors.
WAFs look only at Layer 7, rather than inspecting the
entire OSI stack.
WAFs protect applications, and NGFWs protect networks.
✓ Vulnerability and patch management. Vulnerability
and patch management solutions scan hosts for known
vulnerabilities in software and operating systems, verify
that patches and updates are installed, and correct the
identified vulnerability. This is not a function of NGFWs.
✓ Data loss prevention (DLP). These solutions prevent
transmission of data that matches an identified pattern (such as credit card numbers). These solutions are
implemented for network functions with no real-time
requirements regarding speed and latency.
✓ Secure Web gateways. These solutions use URL categorization to enforce policies regarding user access to Web
sites and block malware propagated by malicious Web
sites. Compared to NGFWs, these solutions have limited
capabilities and are easily circumvented by users.
✓ Secure messaging gateways. These include spam filters
and IM gateways, and provide anti-spam and anti-phishing
protection, antivirus scanning, attachment filtering, content filtering, data loss prevention, and policy compliance
and reporting. Unlike NGFWs, these functions are not
performed in real-time and are used for applications like
e-mail, which is less latency sensitive.
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Benefits of Next-Generation
Firewalls
Next-generation firewalls produce numerous benefits over
traditional network security infrastructures and solutions.
These include
✓ Visibility and control. The enhanced visibility and control
provided by NGFWs enable enterprises to focus on business relevant elements such as applications, users, and
content for policy controls, instead of having to rely on
nebulous and misleading attributes like ports and protocols, and to better and more thoroughly manage risks and
achieve compliance, while providing threat prevention for
allowed applications.
✓ Safe enablement. Achieve comprehensive coverage — by
providing a consistent set of protection and enablement
capabilities for all users, regardless of their location.
✓ Simplification. Reduce complexity of the network security and its administration — by obviating the need for
numerous stand-alone products. This consolidation
reduces hard capital costs, as well as ongoing “hard”
operational expenses, such as support, maintenance,
and software subscriptions, power and HVAC, and “soft”
operational expenses, such as training and management.
✓ IT and business alignment. Enable IT to confidently say
“yes” to the applications needed to best support the
business — by giving them the ability to identify and
granularly control applications while protecting against
a broad array of threats.
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Chapter 5
Deploying Next-Generation
Firewalls
In This Chapter
▶ Implementing employee, desktop, and network controls
▶ Asking the right questions to help you choose the best solution
▶ Designing your network for optimum performance and security
Far too often, technical solutions are implemented without
considering the implications for an organization’s overall security strategy. To avoid this mistake, it is important to
ensure that your policies are up to date and the technology
solutions you are considering support a comprehensive security strategy.
When considering various technology solutions, it is also
important to have a clear understanding of your organization’s requirements. According to Gartner, there are fewer
points of differentiation in the enterprise firewall market, and
therefore organizations must drive their final product selection decisions by their specific requirements.
This chapter describes the different types of controls that
must be considered in an organization’s security policies and
provides specific examples of technical requirements you
need to explore as you define your requirements and develop
a Request For Proposal (RFP) for your vendors. Finally, it
covers the importance of properly segmenting your network
and sensitive data, and how to address mobile users.
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48 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Safe Enablement through
Smart Policies
Enablement is first and foremost about education and knowledge of applications, behavior, risks, and users. In the case of
Enterprise 2.0 applications, the users have long since decided
on the benefits, although there continue to be opportunities for
education on the choice of the best application for the job. IT’s
role is that of an advisor and mentor, advising users about risks
and behaviors — and guiding them regarding which of the array
of available applications might be best at solving their requirements. But enablement is also about raising the awareness of the
risks associated with applications. For that, IT workers need to
become true super-users themselves, albeit in a different sense
of that term than usual. An Enterprise 2.0 super-user is someone
who “lives” inside the application and relies on it for a major set
of tasks. For IT to be relevant, it needs to adopt Enterprise 2.0
wholeheartedly and without prejudice. Once that’s achieved, IT
can successfully educate the users on all the risks associated
with the use of Enterprise 2.0 applications — even those that
pertain to the social and reputational implications of their use.
For governance to be effective, IT needs to take a major role
in the definition of smart policies. But it is critical for IT not
to be the sole owner of these policies, as their effectiveness
and relevance are inversely proportional to the amount of
classic IT thinking. This may sound highly controversial, but
Enterprise 2.0 applications have a tendency to become the
“forbidden fruit.” And while most Enterprise 2.0 adoption
starts from the bottom up, it won’t go very far without executive sponsorship and support. This implies that while IT may
try to stop the use of Enterprise 2.0 applications, once they’ve
been successfully adopted, IT can no longer count on executive support to do that.
Often times the governance discussion is illustrated with
examples of mistakes that users made while using certain
types of Enterprise 2.0 applications, such as social media. It’s
an easy argument for IT, but it’s ultimately a losing one. Nor is
it a smart idea for IT to pursue a compliance-based argument
for the simple reason that no legislation exists, per se, that
governs the use of Enterprise 2.0 applications. It comes down
to using the right tool for the job and being smart about it. For
example, in a heavily regulated environment such as stock
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Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls 49
trading, the use of instant messaging may be prone to retention and auditability rules. IT’s role is to educate the traders
on the implications of each of the tools, participate in the
development of the use policy, and subsequently monitor and
enforce its use. In this example, that policy could prevent the
traders from using Facebook chat for instant messaging, but
enable MSN for that use instead.
Governance and its management counterpart work best if
they’re based on a set of smart corporate policies that are
developed by the four major stakeholders in the Enterprise
2.0 landscape; IT, HR, executive management, and the users.
Clearly IT has a role to play, but it can’t be the strictly defined
role that it so often plays, nor can it be lax about its role as
the enabler and governor of applications and technology.
If application controls are going to be implemented and
enforced, they should be part of the overarching corporate
security policy. As part of the process of implementing an
application control policy, IT should make a concerted effort
to learn about Enterprise 2.0 applications. This includes
embracing them for all their intended purposes and, if
needed, proactively installing them or enabling them in a lab
environment to see how they act. Peer discussions, Enterprise
2.0-focused Web sites, message boards, blogs, and developer
communities are valuable sources of information.
Employee controls
Most companies have some type of application usage policy,
outlining which applications are allowed and which are prohibited. Every employee is expected to understand the contents of
this policy and the ramifications of not complying with it, but
there are a number of unanswered questions, including
✓ Given the increasing number of “bad” applications, how
will an employee know which applications are allowed
and which are prohibited?
✓ How is the list of unapproved applications updated, and
who ensures employees know the list has changed?
✓ What constitutes a policy violation?
✓ What are the ramifications of policy violations — firing or
a reprimand?
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The development of policy guidelines is often challenging
as tension between risk and reward has polarized opinions
about what should be allowed and what should be prohibited.
At the core of the issue is the fact that the two organizational
groups that are typically involved in policy development — IT
security and HR — have largely been sidelined during adoption of new technologies. To build a policy for safe use after
new technologies and applications have been implemented is
no easy task.
Documented employee policies need to be a key piece of
the application control puzzle, but employee controls as a
stand-alone mechanism will remain largely ineffective for safe
enablement of Enterprise 2.0 applications.
Desktop controls
Desktop controls present IT departments with significant challenges. Careful consideration should be applied to the granularity of the desktop controls and the impact on employee
productivity. As with employee policies, desktop controls are
a key piece to the safe enablement of Enterprise 2.0 applications in the enterprise, and if used alone, will be ineffective for
several reasons.
The drastic step of desktop lockdown to keep users from
installing their own applications is a task that is easier said
than done.
✓ Laptops connecting remotely, Internet downloads, USB
drives, and e-mail are all means of installing applications
that may or may not be approved.
✓ Removing administrative rights completely has proven to
be difficult to implement and, in some cases, limits enduser capabilities.
✓ USB drives are now capable of running applications, so
an Enterprise 2.0 application can, in effect, be accessed
after the network admission is granted.
Desktop controls can complement the documented employee
policies as a means to safely enable Enterprise 2.0 applications.
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Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls 51
Network controls
At the network level, what is needed is a means to identify
Enterprise 2.0 applications and block or control them. By
implementing network level controls, IT is able to minimize
the possibility of threats and disruptions stemming from the
use of Enterprise 2.0 applications. Several possible control
mechanisms can be used at the network level, each of which
carries certain drawbacks that reduce their effectiveness.
✓ Stateful firewalls can be used as a first line of defense,
providing coarse filtering of traffic and segmenting the
network into different password-protected zones. One
drawback to stateful firewalls is that they use protocol
and port to identify and control what gets in and out of
the network. This port-centric design is relatively ineffective when faced with Enterprise 2.0 applications that hop
from port to port until they find an open connection to
the network.
✓ IPS added to a firewall deployment enhances the network
threat-prevention capability by looking at a subset of
traffic and blocking known threats or bad applications.
IPS offerings lack the breadth of applications and the
performance required to look at all traffic across all ports
and as such, cannot be considered a full solution.
✓ IPS technologies are typically designed to look only at
a partial set of traffic to avoid impeding performance
and, as such, would be unable to cover the breadth of
applications needed by today’s enterprises. And finally,
managing a firewall and IPS combination is usually a cumbersome task, requiring different management interfaces
pointed at separate policy tables. Simply put, the current
bolt-on solutions do not have the accuracy, policy, or
performance to solve today’s application visibility and
control requirements.
✓ Proxy solutions are another means of traffic control but
here too, they look at a limited set of applications or protocols and as such only see a partial set of the traffic that
needs to be monitored. So an Enterprise 2.0 application
will merely see a port blocked by a proxy and hop over
to the next one that is open. By design, proxies need to
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mimic the application they are trying to control so they
struggle with updates to existing applications as well
as development of proxies for new applications. A final
issue that plagues proxy solutions is throughput performance brought on by how the proxy terminates the
application, and then forwards it on to its destination.
The challenge with any of these network controls is that they
do not have the ability to identify Enterprise 2.0 applications;
they look at only a portion of the traffic and suffer from performance issues.
Defining Your Requirements
and Developing an RFP
After creating or updating your organization’s security policies, it’s time to define your organization’s requirements for
a next-generation firewall solution. At a very high level, this
includes doing your due diligence on the vendors you are considering. You should be asking questions about your potential
vendors, such as:
✓ What is the company’s vision and how well does it execute on that vision?
✓ How innovative is the company?
✓ What is the company’s culture?
✓ What is its development process? What is its quality
assurance process?
✓ What is the size and financial condition of the company?
✓ Is the company a potential acquisition target? If so, is
it more likely to be acquired in order to quickly gain an
edge because of its innovation and proprietary technology, or to kill off a competitor?
✓ How large is its installed customer base?
✓ Does it have other customers (perhaps even competitors)
that are in a similar industry as your own organization?
✓ Does it have any reference accounts or customer success
stories to share?
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Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls 53
Next, define your organization’s technical requirements.
Fortunately, you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel
here. Begin by taking a look at your organization’s security policies (see the previous section) to see what capabilities will be
needed in order to implement and support those policies.
There are also plenty of examples of firewall and network
security requirements practically everywhere. In fact, most
regulatory compliance requirements relating to data protection are based on information security best practices. Even
if your organization isn’t subject to any of these regulations,
using them for guidance isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For
example, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
(PCI DSS), which is applicable to every organization that processes a credit or debit card, defines several firewall requirements, all of which can easily be modified and incorporated
into a formal RFP for your organization.
Drilling down into specific feature requirements, your RFP
should address several requirements, including application
identification, application policy control, threat prevention,
management, networking, and hardware.
✓ Application identification. Describe how the gateway
will accurately identify applications and the mechanisms
used to classify applications.
• Is identification based on IPS or DPI technology? If so,
how are accuracy, completeness, and performance
issues addressed when scanning network traffic?
• How is the traffic classification mechanism differentiated from other vendors?
• How are unknown applications handled?
• Are custom application signatures supported?
• How is SSL-encrypted traffic identified, inspected,
and controlled?
• How do the SSL controls delineate between personal (such as banking, shopping, and health) and
nonpersonal traffic?
• How many applications are identified (provide a
list) and what is the process for updating the application database (for example, software upgrade or
dynamic update)?
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• If a new application is needed, what is the process
for adding it to the device?
• Can an end-user submit an application for identification and analysis and/or define custom
applications?
• Does the product support URL filtering? Describe
the URL filtering database. Is the database located
on the device or on another device?
• Describe/list any other security functions that
can leverage the application information collected,
including drilldown details and user visibility
features.
✓ Application policy control. Describe the process for
implementing policy-based application controls, all
application policy control parameters (such as user,
IP address, date/time), and how they can be used.
• Can policy controls be implemented for all applications identified?
• Can policy controls be implemented for specific
users or groups?
• How are remote access environments supported
(for example, Citrix and Terminal Services)?
• Can port-based controls be implemented for all
applications in the application database?
• Can the solution perform traditional firewall-based
access controls?
• Can policy controls be implemented from a single
management interface?
• Are users warned when they attempt to access a
URL or application that violates policy?
✓ Threat prevention. Describe the intrusion prevention
features and antivirus engine.
• List the types of threats that can be blocked. List
the file types that can be blocked.
• Is data filtering supported?
• Can the threat prevention engine scan inside SSLencrypted traffic? Compressed traffic?
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Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls 55
✓ Management. Describe the management capabilities and
visibility tools that enable a clear picture of the traffic on
the network.
• Does device management require a separate server
or device?
• Are application policy controls, firewall policy controls, and threat prevention features all enabled
from the same policy editor?
• What tools provide a summary view of the applications, threats, and URLs on the network?
• Describe any log visualization tools.
• Are reporting tools available to understand how the
network is being used and to highlight changes in
network usage?
• Describe the logging and reporting capabilities of
the solution.
• Describe how management access is ensured when
the device is under heavy traffic load.
• Are there any central management tools available?
✓ Networking. Describe the network integration and implementation capabilities.
• Describe any Layer 2 or Layer 3 capabilities.
• Are 802.1q VLANs supported? What is the VLAN
capacity?
• Is dynamic routing supported (for example, OSPF,
BGP, and RIP)?
• Describe any QoS or traffic shaping features.
• Is IPv6 supported?
• Are IPSec VPNs supported? SSL VPNs?
• What deployment options are available (for example, in-line, tap, passive)?
• Describe any high availability (HA) capabilities.
✓ Hardware. Is the solution software-based, an OEM
server, or a purpose-built appliance? Describe the
architecture.
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56 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
Deployment Flexibility Matters
It’s important to design your network to maximize performance and efficiency. Properly deploying a NGFW in the most
optimal location or locations on your network is no less important. Segmentation is a key concept in the proper design of
networks and deployment of firewalls. While there are many
different ways to segment a network, next-generation firewalls
bring a unique combination of hardware- and software-related
segmentation capabilities that enable organizations to isolate
key sections of their network, such as a datacenter.
The concept of security zones, which for purposes of isolating
sensitive data or critical network infrastructure (again, for
example, a datacenter), are roughly equivalent to network
segments (see Figure 5-1). A security zone is a logical container
for physical interfaces, VLANs, a range of IP addresses, or a
combination thereof. Interfaces that are added to each security
zone can be configured in Layer 2, Layer 3, or a mixed mode,
thereby enabling deployment in a wide range of network environments without requiring network topology modifications.
Allow only Oracle
Allow only IT Users
Deny all else
Allow only Oracle
Allow only Oracle Users
Inspect Oracle
Deny all else
Allow only SAP
Allow only SAP Users
Deny all else
Server
Farm
Server
Farm
Server
VLAN-based Farm
segment
Interfacebased
segment
Zone-based
segment
Next-Generation FW
Users
Figure 5-1: Network segmentation and security zones.
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Chapter 5: Deploying Next-Generation Firewalls 57
Many different technologies can be used to segment the
network, but when looking at segmentation as a way to isolate the sensitive data or critical infrastructure, several key
requirements need to be taken into account.
✓ Flexibility. To segment the network for security purposes may sometimes require the modification of the
network architecture, a task that most companies will
avoid if at all possible. The ability to segment a network
using IP address ranges, VLANs, physical interfaces, or a
combination thereof, is paramount.
✓ Policy-based security. Policies must be based on the
identity of users and the applications in use — not just
IP addresses, ports, and protocols. Without knowing and
controlling exactly who (users) and what (applications
and content) has access within a segment, sensitive data
may be exposed to applications and users that can
easily bypass controls based on IP addresses, ports, and
protocols.
✓ Performance. Segmentation means applying in-depth
security policies in a network location that is typically
business-critical, high-volume traffic. This means it is
critical that the solution delivering the secure segment
operate at multi-gigabit speeds with very high session
rates and minimal latency.
Addressing Mobile
and Remote Users
Another technical limitation for traditional firewalls is providing visibility and control for users that are mobile or remote,
beyond the perimeter established by enterprise firewalls. The
challenge for next-generation firewalls in this case is to deliver
a solution that provides the same degree of protection and
application enablement received by users on the local network without having to manage a completely independent set
of policies. Another major challenge is to avoid the limitations
and disadvantages associated with the current crop of solutions in this area, including
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58 Next-Generation Firewalls For Dummies
✓ Endpoint security suites. Distribution and installation
are often problematic, while overloaded feature sets
typically create challenges in terms of client-side
performance, resource requirements, and ongoing
administration.
✓ Cloud or CPE-based proxies. Associated Web services
and products typically focus on a narrow traffic stream
(for example, port 80/HTTP only), can have a limited
set of services/countermeasures (such as URL or malware filtering only), and — because they rely on a proxy
architecture — often have to allow many applications to
bypass their filters in order to avoid breaking them.
✓ Backhaul via VPN technology. Whether it’s IPSec or
SSL-based makes little difference. There is an inevitable
bump in latency as client traffic is directed back to one
of a few central sites where the VPN gateways are typically located. Of even greater concern, however, is the
lack of application visibility and control of the head-end
devices that are subsequently used to identify and filter
this traffic.
In comparison, a solution that relies on a persistent client that
can be installed on demand provides a better alternative. Like
the VPN-based approach, remote traffic is sent over a secure
tunnel. The difference in this case is that the connection is
automatically made to the nearest next-generation firewall —
whether it’s deployed at one of an organization’s hub facilities, out in a regional or branch office location, or as part of
a public/private cloud implementation. The latency impact is
thus minimized, and the user’s session is protected and controlled by the full portfolio of application-, user-, and contentoriented identification and inspection technologies — exactly
as if the user were operating on the local network instead
of remotely. The net result is an easy-to-implement solution
that provides remote and mobile users with the same degree
of application enablement and protection as their in-office
counterparts.
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Chapter 6
Ten Evaluation Criteria for
Next-Generation Firewalls
In This Chapter
▶ Knowing what features to look for in a next-generation firewall!
This chapter gives you a few answers to look for from the
vendors you are considering, once you’ve developed your
RFP. Note: If you haven’t yet developed an RFP to define your
next-generation firewall requirements, go to Chapter 5 — go
directly to Chapter 5, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars!
Identify Applications, Not Ports
Identifying an application as soon as the firewall sees it, irrespective of port, protocol, SSL encryption, or other evasive
tactics, provides the greatest amount of application knowledge and the best opportunity for policy control.
Finally, it is important that the next-generation firewall have
an extensive library of application signatures installed on the
device, in order to avoid any latency issues that may occur
with a hosted or “in-the-cloud” database. The library should
be regularly updated with new application signatures from
the vendor or through a subscription service, and signature
updates should be automated (if desired).
Application identification is at the core of traffic classification on NGFWs. It is intelligent, scalable, and extensible, and
always on — across all ports and on all traffic. If this isn’t
true, it isn’t a next-generation firewall.
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Identify Users, Not IP Addresses
Seamless integration with enterprise directory services (such
as Active Directory, LDAP, and eDirectory) enables administrators to tie network activity to users and groups, not just
IP addresses. When used with application- and content identification technologies, IT organizations can leverage user
and group information for visibility, policy creation, forensic
investigation and reporting on application, threat, Web surfing, and data transfer activity.
User identification helps address the challenge of using IP
addresses to monitor and control the activity of specific
users — something that was once fairly simple, but has become
difficult as enterprises moved to an Internet-centric model.
Compounding the visibility problem is an increasingly mobile
enterprise, where employees access the network from virtually anywhere around the world, internal wireless networks
re-assign IP addresses as users move from zone to zone, and
network users are not always company employees. The result
is that the IP address is now an inadequate mechanism for
monitoring and controlling user activity.
Look for the following techniques in NGFWs to verify and
maintain the user-to-IP address relationship and accurately
identify users:
✓ Login monitoring: Login activity is monitored to correlate an IP address to user and group info when a user
logs in to the domain.
✓ End-station polling: Each active PC is polled to verify IP
address information to maintain accurate mapping when
users move around the network without reauthenticating
to the domain.
✓ Captive portal: Associates user and IP address in cases
where hosts are not part of the domain via a web pagebased authentication form.
✓ Ease of deployment: User identification should be performed without impacting critical infrastructure. Some
solutions require an agent to be installed on every
domain controller in the organization, which can impact
performance and significantly complicate deployment.
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Chapter 6: Ten Evaluation Criteria for Next-Generation Firewalls 61
Identify Content, Not Packets
With employees using any application they desire and surfing the Web with impunity, it’s no wonder that enterprises
struggle to protect the network from threat activity. The first
step in regaining control over the threat activity is to identify
and control applications to reduce the unwanted or bad application activity — commonly used as threat vectors. Next, policies to control content can be implemented to complement
the application usage control policies.
Content identification capabilities in a NGFW should include
✓ Threat prevention: Look for innovative features to address
changes in the threat landscape and prevent application
vulnerabilities, spyware, and viruses from penetrating the
network. Examples of such features include application
decoders that take streams of application data that have
been reassembled and parsed, and inspect the stream for
specific threat identifiers, as well as uniform threat engines
and signature formats to detect and block a wide range
of malware (such as viruses, spyware, and vulnerability
exploits) in a single pass rather than using a separate set of
scanning engines and signatures for each type of threat.
✓ Stream-based virus scanning: This technique begins
scanning as soon as the first packets of a file are received
as opposed to waiting until the entire file is loaded into
memory to begin scanning. This minimizes performance
and latency issues by receiving, scanning, and sending
traffic to its intended destination immediately without
having to buffer and then scan the file.
✓ Vulnerability attack protection: Application vulnerability prevention is enabled using a set of intrusion prevention system (IPS) features to block known and unknown
network and application-layer vulnerability exploits,
buffer overflows, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and
port scans from compromising and damaging enterprise
information resources. IPS mechanisms include
• Protocol decoders and anomaly detection
• Stateful pattern matching
• Statistical anomaly detection
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• Heuristic-based analysis
• Block invalid or malformed packets
• IP defragmentation and TCP reassembly
• Custom vulnerability and spyware signatures
Traffic is normalized to eliminate invalid and malformed
packets, while TCP reassembly and IP defragmentation is
performed to ensure the utmost accuracy and protection
despite any attack evasion techniques.
✓ URL filtering: The URL filtering database should be
on-box to reduce latency issues associated with hosted
databases. Customization features should include the
ability to create custom URL categories and to create
granular policies for specific groups and users that can
allow, block, or warn then allow, access to Web sites.
✓ File and data filtering: Data filtering enables administrators to implement policies that reduce the risks associated with the transfer of unauthorized files/data.
• File blocking by type: Control the flow of a wide
range of file types by looking deep within the payload to identify the file type (as opposed to looking
only at the file extension).
• Data filtering: Control the transfer of sensitive data
patterns such as credit card and social security
numbers in application content or attachments.
• File transfer function control: Control the file
transfer functionality within an individual application, allowing application use yet preventing undesired inbound or outbound file transfer.
All of the preceding! The next six features described are much
less technical, but nonetheless important.
Visibility
Next-generation firewalls give IT administrators actionable
data presented in an effective manner — the ability to quickly
and easily view specific, detailed application, user, and content information is invaluable.
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Chapter 6: Ten Evaluation Criteria for Next-Generation Firewalls 63
Control
A robust next-generation firewall solution provides granular
application usage control policies, such as any combination of
✓ Allow or deny
✓ Allow certain application functions and apply traffic
shaping
✓ Allow but scan
✓ Decrypt and inspect
✓ Allow for certain users or groups
Performance
In-line NGFWs must perform advanced network security
functions that are computationally intensive — and they
must do so in real-time while introducing little or no latency.
A next-generation firewall needs to be capable of handling
multi-gigabit traffic flows using high-speed function-specific
processors on purpose-built platforms. Ideally, to ensure
availability of management and packet processing, the management plane and control plane should be separate.
Flexibility
Networking flexibility helps ensure compatibility with virtually any organization’s computing environment. Enabling
implementation without the need for redesign or reconfiguration depends on supporting a wide range of networking features and options, such as:
✓ 802.1q and port-based VLANs
✓ Trunked ports
✓ Transparent mode
✓ Dynamic routing protocols (such as OSPF and BGP)
✓ IPv6 support
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✓ IPSec and SSL VPN support
✓ High-capacity interfaces and multiple, mixed modes
(such as tap, Layer 1, Layer 2, and Layer 3)
Reliability
Reliability helps ensure nonstop operations and entails features such as:
✓ Active-passive and/or active-active failover
✓ State and configuration synchronization
✓ Redundant components (such as dual power supplies)
Scalability
Scalability is primarily dependent on having solid management capabilities (including centralized device and policy
management, and synchronization among devices) and highperformance hardware, but can also be facilitated by support
for virtual systems, where one physical firewall can be configured to act as many.
Manageability
Manageability is an important characteristic to look for in
a next-generation firewall. A sophisticated solution that
is too difficult to administer and maintain will inevitably fail to achieve maximum effectiveness and even risks
being deployed in an incorrect — and insecure — manner.
Important management capabilities include
✓ Local and remote management
✓ Centralized management
✓ Role-based administration
✓ Automatic signature updates
✓ Real-time monitoring of device status and security events
✓ Robust logging and customizable reporting
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