This blog is all about Cyber Security and IT

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Understanding the Basics: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability




Confidentiality, integrity, and availability, often known as CIA, are the building blocks of information security .

Any attack on an information system will compromise one, two, or all three of these components. Based on which of these components is being compromised the most, efficient security controls can be designed accordingly.


Confidentiality

In layman’s terms, something that is confidential is secret and is not supposed to be disclosed to unintended people or entities. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind that needs to be kept confidential? Probably
your passwords and ATM PINs . There may be many parameters and information items that need to be kept confidential during a particular communication. If confidentiality is compromised, it might result in
unauthorized access to your systems or severe loss to your privacy!

Integrity

In context of the information security (InfoSec) world, integrity means that when a sender sends data, the receiver must receive exactly the same data as sent by the sender. For example, if someone sends a message “Hello!”, then the receiver must receive “Hello!” . Any addition or subtraction of data during transit would mean the integrity has been compromised.

Availability

Availability implies that information is available to the authorized parties whenever required. For example, consider a server that stores the payroll data of company employees. The finance team wants to access it at of fiscal year-end for some reporting purpose. If the server is able to provide all the requested information to the requestors, then its availability is considered good and healthy. But if the server goes down at all (for any intentional or unintentional reason), and the finance team is not able to retrieve required data in time, then we say that the information availability has been affected or compromised.

During an attack on a computer system, at least one of the three, confidentiality, integrity or availability, is affected or compromised.

Various attacks on Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability

Attacks that affect Confidentiality are:
Packet sniffing, password cracking, dumpster diving, wiretapping, keylogging, phishing

Attacks that affect Integrity are:
Salami attacks, data diddling attacks, session hijacking, man-inthe- middle attack

Attacks that affect Availability are :
DoS and DDoS attacks, SYN flood attacks, physical attacks on

How to Conduct Pentesting for any organisation (Complete Tutorial)



Pentesting means finding vulnerabilities by using various techniques and methods .





Organisations hire consultants who have team of complete auditors who perfrom the pentesting .





Auditors are those who know how to find vulnerabilities and perform exploits as well to check the securities issues .





Auditors perform the task depending upon the agreement signed between the organisation and the auditors .





Based on the agreement , Pentesting will be performed. Just like we have different type of hackings like ... black ,white and grey box .. similarly auditors perform pentesting based on the the rights provided to them.






Types of hacking





External pentesting
This type of hacking is done from the Internet against the client’s public network infrastructure; that is, on those computers in the organization that are exposed to the Internet because they provide a public service. Example of public hosts: router, firewall, web server, mail server, name server, etc.





Internal pentesting
As the name suggests, this type of hacking is executed from the customer’s internal network.





Black box hacking
This mode is applicable to external testing only. It is called so because the client only gives the name of the company to the consultant, so the auditor starts with no information.





Gray box hacking
This method is often refer to internal pentestings. Nevertheless, some auditors also called gray-box-hacking an external test in which the client provides limited information on public computers to be audited.





White box hacking
White-box hacking is also called transparent hacking. This method applies only to internal pentestings and is called this way because the client gives complete information to the auditor about its networks and systems.





Phases of hacking


 


Both the auditor and the cracker follow a logical sequence of steps when conducting a hacking. These grouped steps are called phases.
There is a general consensus among the entities and information security
professionals that these phases are 5 in the following order:
1-> Reconnaissance 2-> Scanning 3-> Gaining Access 4-> Maintaining Access 5-> Erasing Clues
Usually these phases are represented as a cycle that is commonly called “the circle of hacking” with the aim of emphasizing that the cracker can continue the process over and over again.



Though, information security auditors who perform ethical hacking services present a slight variation in the implementation phases like this:






Monday, March 18, 2019

Firewall, IDS, and IPS



The three devices commonly used to provide security are the firewall, the IDS, and the IPS.





Firewall





A firewall is a network security system that actively monitors and regulates the inbound and outbound network traffic based on a predefined security ruleset. A firewall typically acts a barrier between a trusted, secure internal network and an outside network, such as the Internet, which may not be secured enough. A firewall helps screen out malicious users, viruses, and worms that try to access your network from the Internet.





Some firewalls are simply software that runs on your computer, while other firewalls are sets of complete hardware devices and appliances. Firewalls can operate on individual hosts but are widely implemented on the network level. Firewalls are often used to create a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a physical or logical subsection of a network that separates the internal private LAN from the external untrusted network like the Internet. The resources that need to be accessed externally over the Internet, such as a web server hosting a website, are kept in the DMZ. The remaining resources, like the database server and backup servers are all kept in an internal private LAN and are not directly accessible over the Internet. Because the resources in a DMZ are directly accessible to the public, they need to be hardened for security. Firewalls also offer a feature known as stateful inspection , which monitors and keeps track of all the network connections and ensures that all inbound packets are the result of an outbound request. This feature was primarily designed to prevent harmful packets from entering the network and also defend against common information-gathering techniques like port scanning.





Intrusion Detection System





Unlike a typical firewall, which functions on predefined rules, an intrusion detection system is more intelligent in the way it detects various attacks. While a firewall may just check and restrict access to a particular system (based on IP address and port), the IDS would go an extra mile to check whether the traffic contains any malicious code, which might lead to an attack. Just as an anti-virus program has a signature database of known viruses, an IDS has a signature database for known and common attacks. It checks all packets traversing the network and tries to match them against its signature database. If a match is found, it raises an alert about the attack so that the network/system administrator can take appropriate steps to prevent it.





Intrusion Prevention System





An intrusion prevention system does all the jobs that an IDS does, but it also stops the attack (by dropping packets) whenever it encounters malicious traffic in network packets. This ensures an automated response to an attack and reduces manual intervention.


Do you know where the passwords are stored in linux?



Two important files in the Linux system are responsible for storing user credentials:





/etc/passwd





Is a text file that stores all the account information (except the password) required for user login.





The following sample entry from an /etc/passwd file will help clarify its components:









1. User Name: This is the username used to log in.





2. Password: The X character implies that encrypted password for this user is stored in the /etc/shadow file.





3. User ID (UID): Each user on the system has a unique ID. UID 0 (zero) is reserved for the root user.





4. Group ID (GID): This is the group ID of the group to which the user belongs.





5. User ID Info: This comment field can store additional information about the user, including email, telephone number, and so on.





6. Home Directory: This is the default directory that will be available for the user after login. All the user-specific documents and settings are stored in the respective home directory.





7. Command/Shell Path: This is the path to the command prompt, or shell .





/etc/shadow









Is a text file that stores actual passwords in hashed format. It also stores parameters related to the password policy that has been applied for the user. Following is an example entry from the /etc/shadow file:





1. Username: This is the username to which the password belongs.





2. Password: This is the password stored in hashed format.





3. Last password change: This field indicates the number of days since the last password change.





4. Minimum Age: This denotes the number of days remaining before the user can change his or her password.





5. Maximum Age: This denotes the maximum number of days after which the user must change his or her password.





6. Expiry Warning: This denotes the number of days before which the user must be warned about the password expiring.





7. Inactive: This is the duration in days after password expiry that the account will be disabled.


Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Defensive measures for Protecting Exploitation in Organisational Environment



Create a security policy that includes a section about password guidelines (key length, use of special characters, periodical expiration of keys, account blocking policy, etc.)






Enable auditing services at the operating system level in end-user devices, servers and communications equipment and use log correlation software to perform event monitoring.






Restrict access to the Administrator and root account so that it cannot perform logon through the network, but only physically in the computer console.






Use port security and admission control (NAC) on networking devices so that only authorized users can connect to the network.
Replace insecure protocols that send information in plain text as HTTP, SMTP, TELNET, FTP, with their secure counterparts which use digital certificates and encryption for transmission: HTTPS, SMTP, SSL, SSH, SFTP, etc.






Set the switches to detect the sending of free and unauthorized ARP and other known attacks and react to port violation taking appropriate actions and reporting the event.






Implement secure authentication protocols in wireless equipment and isolate wireless segments from other internal subnets using intelligent next generation firewalls68.





Configure intelligent next generation firewalls and other network devices to block attacks.






Use network and security management software for threat detection, vulnerability assessment and automatic response to events.






Design and implement an Information Security Policy based on the ISO 27000 standard.






mplement awareness campaigns about good practices on information security for the end-users.






Train staff from the IT and related departments about information security and specialized topics such as ethical hacking, computer forensics and defense mechanisms.






Define profiles for IT personnel and establish which international certifications on information security your functionaries must obtain according to their position.


Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Preventive Measures to Stop Enumeration




Multiple protocols are susceptible of enumeration, we should ask our
client which ones are really needed in the network. The obvious preventive measure is to disable those insecure protocols that are not required in the network.
However, this is not always feasible, especially if there are legacy applications in the organization that depends on insecure protocols to operate and for which there is no migration scheduled in the short term.






Some defensive measures that you can suggest to your client are:






Configure filter rules on the perimeter firewall(s) to prevent that protocols susceptible to enumeration that do not perform a public function be exposed to Internet (e.g. Netbios).






Implement a migration plan to update the version of legacy operating systems and applications periodically based on cost/benefit. In companies where the number of workstations is large, you might consider a project to replace the desktops by thin clients by using virtualization. License costs are usually lower in virtual environments.






Similarly, in environments with many servers, a consolidation process could not only provide savings in energy consumption, but also on maintenance costs of hardware/software and administration.






If you have a predominantly Windows network, you can deploy Active Directory policies to prevent the establishment of invalid logon sessions and disable the login through the network for the built-in Administrator account. However, care must be taken with legacy programs that could use null sessions.


Monday, March 11, 2019

Defensive measures for Less exposure of Vulnerabilities during scanning



Although the only 100% secure network is the one that is disconnected, we may take defensive measures that help us minimize security risks in our infrastructure during the scan.





Here are some precautions that we can take:






To start, you cannot scan an application that is not installed. This means that before putting a target on production we should do a “hardening” of the operating system, applications and services.






Hardening means “minimize”. Therefore, for a server to perform a specific function there is no point to enable unnecessary services, neither should be installed applications that do not serve the intended purpose. For example,
if the target would be only a Web server (HTTP/HTTPS), then why the service IRC (chat) have to be enabled?






By preventing unnecessary applications remaining active on the equipment, we prevent that potential vulnerabilities become a point for future exploitation.






Enable automatic update of the operating system patches that fix security issues so they are installed in a timely manner.






Keep up support contracts with the hardware/software providers, to reach them in case of an eventuality, for example; a zero-day vulnerability (for which there is no patch yet).






Redesigning the network to include security measures such as segmentation to separate security zones by intelligent next generation firewalls.






Set rules in firewalls to filter unauthorized access from the Internet and internal subnets ports.






Install intrusion prevention systems (IPS) that can work with firewalls and other network devices to detect threats (such as ping sweeps, mass scanning, etc.) and block them immediately.






Perform periodic analysis of vulnerabilities to detect any possible threats to the security of our network and take appropriate corrective actions.


Sunday, March 10, 2019

How to conduct Professional Pentesting|Part-2 | Reconnaissance or footprinting



Reconnaissance is the first phase in the implementation of a hacking. The aim of this phase is to discover as much relevant information as we can from the client’s organization or victim.





Now, depending on whether the interaction with the target is direct or indirect, the reconnaissance can be active or passive.
Passive reconnaissance
We say the reconnaissance is passive when we have no direct interaction with the client or victim. For example, we use a search engine like Google and inquire the name of the audited company, in the results we get the name of the client’s website and discover that the web server name is www.enterprisex.com, then we do a DNS search and get that the IP address of that server is 200.20.2.2

Active Reconnaissance
In this type of reconnaissance there is a direct interaction with the target or victim. Examples of active reconnaissance:





Ping sweeps to determine the active public computers within a range of IP’s. Connecting to a service port in order to gather a banner and try to determine the software version.
Using social engineering to obtain confidential information.





Reconnaissance tools





The hacker’s platform it’s up to you, but if you ask my opinion I prefer to use Kali Linux.





Footprinting with Google





Google is undoubtedly the most widely used due to its classification technology web pages (Page Rank), which allows us to search quickly and accurately. For our reconnaissance example with Google we will begin with the most simple: searching for the company’s name.





In this example we’ll use as victim the Project Scanme by Nmap8. Scanme is a free site maintained by Fyodor, the creator of NMAP port scanner.









Google operators:





(plus symbol): is used to include words that because they are very common are not included on Google search results. For example, say that you want to look for company The X, given that the article “the” is very common, it is usually excluded from the search. If we want this word to be included, then we write our search text like this: Company +The X





(minus symbol): is used to exclude a term from results that otherwise could include it. For example, if we are looking for banking institutions, we could write: banks -furniture






”” (double quotes): if we need to find a text literally, we framed it in double quotes. Example: “Company X”






~ (tilde): placing this prefix to a word will include synonyms thereof. For example, search by ~company X will also include results for organization X






OR: This allows you to include results that meet one or both criteria. For example, “Company X General Manager” OR “Company X System Manager”






site: allow to limit searches to a particular Internet site. Example: General Manager site:companyX.com






link: list of pages that contain links to the url. For example, searching for link:companyX.com gets pages that contain links to company X website.






filetype: or ext: allows you to search by file types. Example: Payment roles + ext:pdf site:empresax.com






allintext: get pages that contain the search words within the text or body thereof. Example: allintext: Company X






inurl: shows results that contain the search words in the web address (URL). Example: inurl: Company X





Of course there are more operators that can be used with Google, but I think these are the most useful.
Returning to our reconnaissance example, we found among the results some pages about the NMAP organization. The one that catches our attention is scanme.nmap.org, this brings us to our next tool: DNS name resolution.





Determining names with nslookup





Now that we know the main site of our client, we can make a DNS query obtain its IP address. In a real case it is possibly to find more than one customer site referenced by Google and therefore we’ll get several IP addresses. Actually, the idea behind getting this first translation is to estimate the range of IP’s that we will need to scan in order to identify additional hosts that could belong to the client.
Assuming that our target is using IPv4 addresses, we could test the whole range of hosts inside the subnet.
The latter is impractical if you try to address Class A or B, since the scanning process could last longer. To determine the range more accurately, we can use other means as looking in Who-Is directories or performing socia engineering attacks. In this example we will made a name query using the nslookup command














DNS resolution with nslookup on Windows

Note: During an audit of any kind it is important to be organized and take notes of our findings. This will allow us to tie up loose ends while revealing more information as we go.
Returning to the nslookup command, we still can learn more from our target. We will use some useful options:
set type = [NS | MX | ALL] to set the query type, NS name service, MX mail service (mail exchanger) and ALL to show everything.
ls [-a | -d] domain enables you to list the addresses for the specified domain (for which the DNS server for that domain must have this option enabled) -a canonical names and aliases, -d all records in the DNS zone.





Maltego
Maltego is a tool that allows collecting data from an organization easily, through the use of graphic objects and contextual menus that let you apply “transformations”









You can also collect all the artifacts in the form of pdf reports ....like









Visual IP Trace route





During the execution of an external black box hacking is useful to know the
geographical location of a particular target. Imagine for example that we have obtained the names of the mail server and web server of our client and want to know if these services are hosted on the public network managed by the company itself or if instead, they are located in an external hosting as Yahoo Small Business , Gator, or similar. Why do we want to know this? Very simple, if the target servers happen to be held on an external hosting, in the event we managed to break into such equipment, we would actually be hacking the hosting provider, not our client, in which case we could face a possible lawsuit. Because of this, it is strongly recommended to perform a trace route to discover the geographical location of a target host. That way we would be able to decide “to hack or not to hack”.
There are several applications on the market that perform visual traceroute, to name a few: Visual IP Trace, Visual Route. Some of them are free or have paid versions with additional features such as the likelihood of generating reports.









E-mail tracking tools
It is possible that during the execution of an external hacking we come across a case in which our client has outsourced DNS, E-mail and Web services, and everything we do only lead us to the hosting provider.

This implies that at least the ISP has assigned to our client one public IP for
outbound Internet, so there has to be a router or a firewall doing NAT so that internal users can navigate – I’m assuming the client uses IPv4. If this is the case, then getting this public IP address is now our target, let’s see how we can get this through the analysis of an email.





Raised this new goal now we would make our customer send us an email, and only then we will be able to analyze data from the email header in order to determine the source IP address. This is pretty simple since we have been hired by them to run an ethical hacking, so we could send e-mail pretending to show them how the audit is progressing and wait for the response. For this analysis we can use any email tracking tool or we can manually review the email header; but the use of automated tools has the advantage of obtaining a report. It should be mentioned that the email analysis tools not only help to identify an email source IP address, but also show whether the sender is indeed who he says he is, we can use these applications to determine if we’re dealing with a false email or a phishing email.






Defensive measures to Prevent reconnaissance attacks



Defensive measures Prevent reconnaissance attacks by 100% is virtually impossible, precisely because footprinting is based on finding publicly available information about the target organization. And this information it’s public for a good reason.
For example, imagine the ABC organization which sells pet products through its website and through retail distribution stores.
Would it make sense to keep secret the address of the website www.abc.com?





Publishing the website allow users to find it through search engines like Google, Altavista, Metacrawler, etc., even without investing in advertising. And how could it sell the products through its website if the customers don’t know how to get there?
Therefore, what we can do is to minimize our exposure by making public only what it’s needed. I remember a particular case, during the reconnaissance phase when I found out that the network administrator of my client had posted the Intranet webserver on the Internet.
The same word Intranet indicates that this is a server for internal use only. This is a clear example of a service that should not be published. If for any reason is necessary to access it over the Internet, the safest way to do this is through the implementation of virtual private networks (VPNs), but not by opening the port in the firewall so that everyone can find an internal server from Internet.
Clarified this point, I suggest some preventive measures:





Keep the information private in the Who-Is directory services paying an annual fee to your hosting provider or NIC.






Avoid posting detailed information about operating systems, applications, hardware and personal information through social media or the news job offering section.






Train all company personnel on information security precautions and how to avoid becoming a victim of a social engineering attack.






Publish over the Internet only services of public nature (corporate web, name server, mail server, etc.) and confine such servers in a demilitarized zone (DMZ).






Install perimeter security measures (intelligent next generation firewalls, IDS/IPS systems, etc.).






Implement measures to protect data as encryption.


Thursday, March 7, 2019

How to conduct Professional Pentesting ? - Part 1



When we talk about ethical hacking, we mean the act of making controlled penetration tests on computer systems; it means that the consultant or pentester, acting from the point of view of a cracker, will try to find vulnerabilities in the audited computers that can be exploited, providing - in some cases - access to the affected system; but always in a controlled environment and never effect the operation of the computer services being audited.





Phases of hacking





Both the auditor and the cracker follow a logical sequence of steps when conducting a hacking. These grouped steps are called phases.
There is a general consensus among the entities and information security
professionals that these phases are 5 in the following order:
1-> Reconnaissance 2-> Scanning 3-> Gaining Access 4-> Maintaining Access 5-> Erasing Clues
Usually these phases are represented as a cycle that is commonly called “the circle of hacking” with the aim of emphasizing that the cracker can continue the process over and over again.





Though, information security auditors who perform ethical hacking services present a slight variation in the implementation phases like this:










1-> Reconnaissance 2-> Scanning 3-> Gaining Access 4-> Writing the Report 5-> Presenting the Report
In this way, ethical hackers stop at Phase 3 of the “circle of hacking” to report their findings and make recommendations to the client.
Subsequent posts will explain each phase in detail, and how to apply software tools and common sense, coupled with the experience, to run an ethical hacking from start to finish in a professional manner.






Types of hacking
When we execute an ethical hacking is necessary to establish its scope to develop a realistic schedule of work and to deliver the economic proposal to the client. To determine the project extent we need to know at least three basic elements: the type of hacking that we will conduct, the modality and the additional services that customers would like to include with the contracted service. Depending on where we execute the penetration testing, an ethical hacking can be external or internal.





External pentesting
This type of hacking is done from the Internet against the client’s public network infrastructure; that is, on those computers in the organization that are exposed to the Internet because they provide a public service. Example of public hosts: router, firewall, web server, mail server, name server, etc.





Internal pentesting
As the name suggests, this type of hacking is executed from the customer’s internal network, from the point of view of a company employee, consultant, or business associate that has access to the corporate network.





In this type of penetration test we often find more security holes than its external counterpart, because many system administrators are concerned about protecting the network perimeter and underestimate the internal attackers.





Black box hacking
This mode is applicable to external testing only. It is called so because the client only gives the name of the company to the consultant, so the auditor starts with no information, the infrastructure of the organization is a “black box”. While this type of audit is considered more realistic, since the external attacker who chooses an X victim has no further information to start that the name of the organization that is going to attack, it is also true that it requires a greater investment of time and therefore the cost incurred is higher too. Additionally, it should be noted that the ethical hacker - unlike the cracker - does not have all the time in the world to perform penetration testing, so the preliminary analysis cannot extend beyond what is possible in practical terms because of cost/time/benefit.





Gray box hacking
This method is often refer to internal pentestings. Nevertheless, some auditors also called gray-box-hacking an external test in which the client provides limited information on public computers to be audited. Example: a list of data such as IP address and type/function of the equipment (router, web-server, firewall, etc.). When the term is applied to internal testing, it is given that name because the consultant receives the same access that an employee would have like having his laptop connected to the internal network and the NIC configured properly (IP address, subnet mask, gateway and DNS server); but does not obtain additional information such as: username/password to join a domain, the existence of related subnets, etc.





White box hacking
White-box hacking is also called transparent hacking. This method applies only to internal pentestings and is called this way because the client gives complete information to the auditor about its networks and systems. This means, that besides providing a connection to the network and configuration information , the consultant receives extensive information such as network diagrams, detailed equipment audit list including names, types, platforms, main services, IP addresses, information from remote subnets, etc. Because the consultant avoids having to find out this information, this kind of hacking usually takes less time to execute and therefore also reduces costs.





Additional hacking services





There are additional services that can be included with an ethical hacking; among the popular ones are: social engineering, wardialing, wardriving, stolen equipment simulation and physical security.
Social engineering
Social engineering refers to the act of gathering information through the
manipulation of people, it means that the hacker acquire confidential data using the wellknown fact that the weakest link in the chain of information security is the human component.
Wardialing
During the early years of Internet, access to it was mostly made by using modems, so it was common for companies to have a group of these devices (modem pool) connected to a PBX to answer the calls that required access to the company’s local network. These modems were connected to a remote access server (RAS), which through a menu entry (username/password) and using protocols such as SLIP or PPP, allowed authorized users to connect as if they were on the local network and have access to resources as applications, shared folders, printers, etc. At that time security was not something that managers meditated much, so many of these modems were not adequately protected, which made them easy prey for the first wardialing programs. What these programs did was dial phone numbers, based on the initial value provided by the user, and record those in which a modem answered instead of a person; then the cracker called these numbers manually and executed AT3 commands to gain access to the modem or ran brute force programs to overcome the key set by the system administrator. Afterward, these programs became more sophisticated and from the same application they could discover modems automatically and execute brute force password attacks.
Today, our way of connecting to the Internet has changed, yet, is a fact to notice that many system and network managers still use modems as a backup strategy to provide remote support in the event of a network failure. It should, therefore, not be dismissed as an entry point into the customer network.
Wardriving
The term wardriving is derived from its predecessor wardialing, but is applied to wireless networks. The hacker strikes up a wireless war from the vicinity of the client/victim company, usually from his parked car with a laptop and a signal booster antenna.The aim is to detect the presence of wireless networks that belong to the client and identify vulnerabilities that could allow entry to the hacker. expertise with customer to back up the devices prior to the audit.
Physical security audit
Although physical security is considered by many experts as an independent subject from ethical hacking, specialized companies can integrate it as part of the service. This type of audit involves difficulties and risks that you must be aware with the aim of avoiding situations that endanger those involved. I point this because a physical security audit could be as simple as an inspection accompanied by customer staff filling
out forms, a little bit more complex when we try getting to the boardroom to place a spy device pretending to be a lost customer, or something as delicate as attempting to circumvent armed guards and enter through a back door.


Finally, once you have obtained the required customer information - type of hacking, mode and optional services - we are ready to prepare a proposal that clearly defines: the scope of the service, the time it takes us to perform the ethical hacking, the deliverable (a report of findings and recommendations), costs and payment.


What is Sourcefire | IPS



Sourcefire Next-Generation IPS sets a new standard for advanced threat protection.





Real-time Contextual Awareness—See and correlate extensive amounts of event data related to IT environments—applications, users, devices, operating systems, vulnerabilities, services, processes, network behaviours, files and threats





Advanced Threat Protection—Protecting for the latest threats, Sourcefire delivers the best threat prevention .





Intelligent Security Automation—Automated event impact assessment, IPS policy tuning, policy management, network behaviour analysis.





Unparalleled Performance and Scalability—Purpose-built appliances incorporate a low-latency, single-pass design for unprecedented performance and scalability





Application Control and URL Filtering—Reduce the surface area of attack
through optional granular control of over 1200 applications and 100s millions of URLs in over 80 categories





Sourcefire has been aggregating network intelligence to provide “context” to network security defenses.
• Worms
• Triojans
• Backdoor attacks
• Spyware
• Port Scans
• VoIP attacks
• IPv6 attacks
• DoS attacks
• Buffer overflows
• P2P attacks
• Statistical anomalies
• Protocol anomalies
• Application anomalies
• Malformed traffic
• Invalid headers
• Blended threats
• Rate-based threats
• Zero-day threats
• TCP segmentations and
IP fragmentation









The Sourcefire NGIPS uses contextual awareness to fuel intelligent automation in the following ways:






• Optimize defenses and system performance by automating protection policy updates based on network changes
• Reduce the number of “actionable” security events by up to 99% by correlating threats against target operating systems and applications and their inherent vulnerabilities
• Know instantly who to contact when an internal host is affected by a client-side attack
• Be alerted when a host violates a configuration policy or attempts to access an unauthorized system
• Detect the spread of malware by baselining “normal” network traffic and detecting network anomalies





Sourcefire NGIPS takes advantage of the best hardware technology in the industry, providing IPS inspected throughput options ranging from 50Mbps to 40+Gbps







Tuesday, March 5, 2019

ISO 27001 | Certification | Overview



ISO/IEC 27001, also known as ISO 27001, is a security standard that outlines the suggested requirements for building, monitoring and improving an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS is a set of policies for protecting sensitive information, e.g., financial data, intellectual property, customer details and employee records.





ISO 27001 is a voluntary standard employed by service providers to secure customer information. It requires an independent and accredited body to formally audit an organization to ensure compliance.





The benefits of working with an ISO 27001 certified service provider include:





  • Risk management – An ISMS helps govern who within an organization can access specific information, reducing the risk that said information can be stolen or otherwise compromised.
  • Information security – An ISMS contains information management protocols detailing how specific data needs to be handled and transmitted.
  • Business continuity – To remain ISO 27001 compliant, a service provider’s ISMS must be continuously tested and improved upon. This helps prevent data breaches that could impact your core business functions.




For service providers, compliance provides peace of mind to your customers, while allowing you to maintain due diligence regarding data security.





ISO COMPLIANCE AND INFORMATION SECURITY GOVERNANCE





ISO 27001 compliance can play an integral role in creating an information security governance policy-the plans, tools and business practices used by an enterprise to secure their sensitive data.





Creating an ISO compliant ISMS is a comprehensive process that includes scoping, planning, training and support. Below are some of the most important elements to be addressed before an enterprise can become certified.





ISO 27001 accreditation & compliance checklist




1. ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT





Internal and external issues that can affect an enterprise’s ability to build an ISMS, e.g., information security, as well as legal, regulatory and contractual obligations, need to be identified.





2. SCOPE





The information defined in step one is then used to document the scope of the ISMS, outlining relevant areas, as well as boundaries. The ISMS than needs to be implemented, maintained and continually improved according to specific information security risks and ISO 27001 requirements.





3. LEADERSHIP





The enterprise’s management needs the necessary leadership skills to maintain the ISMS. This includes:





  • Creating an information security policy in line with the strategic direction of the organization.
  • Integrating the ISMS into standard organization processes.
  • Communicating the details of the information security policy and highlighting the importance of ISMS requirements.
  • Promoting the continual improvement to the ISMS.
  • Ensuring adequate support for staff who work to improve the system.




4. PLANNING





A plan for addressing information security risks needs to be integrated into the ISMS process. This involves:





  • Establishing and applying a detailed information security risk management process that includes risk criteria, the identification of information security threats, risk analysis and the evaluation of risks relative to the established criteria.
  • Defining and applying a process for mitigating threats that includes controls needed to implement each risk treatment option.




5. SUPPORT





The enterprise needs to obtain the resources, people, and infrastructure to effectively implement an ISMS.





Support involves training and mentoring staff to deal with sensitive information. Additionally, employees need to be informed as to how they can contribute to the effectiveness of the ISMS and the implications of not conforming to information security policies.





Lastly, internal and external communication policies relevant to the ISMS need to be established. Policies should include the definition of issues that need to be communicated, with whom these issues should be communicated and the methods of communication.





6. OPERATIONS





This step focuses on executing the plans and processes defined in previous sections. The organization needs to document all actions carried out to ensure that processes are executed as planned.





Additionally, outsourced processes need to be identified to evaluate and control information security risks.





7. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION





Performance evaluations ensure the continued effectiveness and future improvement of the ISMS. It also regularly identifies areas for potential improvement in information security.





Internal audits and management reviews need to be conducted and documented at defined regular intervals to evaluate ISMS performance.





8. IMPROVEMENT





Nonconformities with ISO 27001 requirements need to be addressed immediately upon discovery. Organizations need to identify and execute the steps to ensure that the same issues don’t recur.





Additionally, enterprises must continually attempt to improve the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of their ISMS.