Firewalls continue to secure a countless number of organizations across the world and remain first line of defense against known cyber attacks and network risks. Avalanche of IT-led forces and evolution in threat landscape has brought increased onus on firewalls. On the other side, as enterprises extend their business leveraging internet driven business models and increasingly collaborative networks, embracing cloud and virtual environments, there's a need to understand how this ties with the changing role of security technologies such as a firewall. This webinar explains how a tectonic shift in enterprise networking requires rethinking firewall deployment and management for effective security management.

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Network Security Appliances - UTM, NGFW (Hardware
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Modem Router Integrated Security
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Implemented, Secured –
Now Let’s Audit the Firewall
Presenter:
Keyur Shah
Manager - Presales

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Agenda
 Need of Firewall Audit
 Firewall Audit Procedures
 Evaluation Parameters and Best Practices

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What necessitates firewall security audit?
 Firewalls are solely responsible for any good or bad traffic
 Exponential growth in networks, networking speed & devices, apps, web / cloud / virtualization
infrastructure has increased firewall complexity in terms of placement, rules and settings
 As many as 80% of firewalls examined in a recent data breach investigation were found poorly
configured!
 A quarter of UK and US businesses have had to re-do more than 60% of all firewall changes since they
were not implemented correctly the first time

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Firewall Audit Procedure
 Baselines and Procedures
 Identification & Authentication
 Configuration
 Auditing and Administration
 Configuration Change Management
 Management & Monitoring
 Failover / Redundancy
 Findings and Recommendations

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Baselines and Procedures
 Evaluation Parameter:
 Checking proper documentation for firewall
baseline and key firewall procedures
 Standards & Best Practices:
 Having a baseline for firewall helps
implement a security level that is
consistent across the organization
 Documented procedures relating to backup,
monitoring and incidence response reduces
manual dependency

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Identification & Authentication
 Evaluation Parameter:
 Is the firewall being managed by third party personnel or by the
organization itself? If managed by third party, is it protected by
an NDA?
 Are all administrators authenticated using individual accounts
before granting access to the firewall's administration interface?
 What is the procedure for creating users/administrators?
 Are all administrator accounts assigned the lowest privilege
level that allows them to perform their duties?
 How often is the firewall configuration reviewed for presence of
unauthorized accounts?

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Identification & Authentication
 Standards & Best Practices:
 Third Party personnel managing the firewall of an organization need to
sign an NDA with the later
 Maintaining individual accounts for each administrator helps implement
accountability for any malicious activity occurring intentionally or
unintentionally
 Procedures should address both creation as well as deletion of user
accounts for the firewall
 Administrators should be assigned the lowest privilege level that allows
them to perform their job
 Unauthorized accounts pose a serious threat to the overall security
posture of the organization

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Configuration
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Is the firewall configured to be able to protect the network against denial of
service attacks such as Ping of Death, TCP SYN floods, etc.
 Is any sort of Ingress/Egress Filtering configured?
 Does the firewall use the latest version of the firewall software with all security-
related patches applied?
 How often is the firewall configuration rule sets tested in the form of a PT/VA?
 Are the firewall administrators registered with the vendors’ vulnerability mailing
list to keep themselves updated with the latest security patches?
 Does the firewall perform anti-virus scanning and content security checking of all
inbound packets for HTTP, FTP and SMTP?
 How is the performance of the firewall monitored? (memory , CPU)
 Are any VPNs configured on the firewall?

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Configuration
 Standards & Best Practices:
 Rule sets should be tested every 6 months to a year
depending on the number of changes made to the
configuration file
 Firewall administrators should subscribe to vulnerability
mailing list pertaining to their firewall in order to be
aware of the latest vulnerabilities affecting their product
 As part of the capacity management procedure, periodic
reviews of the key parameters such as memory, CPU
should be monitored to address current and future needs

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Auditing and Administration
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Are log recipient hosts identified
and configured?
 Is the security of the logs on the host
maintained through local OS settings?
 How often are the logs reviewed? Does
senior management receive status reports?
 Is logging timestamp enabled?
 Is the time synchronized with an NTP Server?
 Are logs reviewed/ monitored regularly?

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Auditing and Administration
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Are the logs backed up? How often is the backup
taken? What is the retention period of the logs?
 Is the firewall configuration data backed up weekly
and / or whenever configuration changes occur?
 Where is the configuration data backup stored?
 Is the firewall configuration well documented?
 Is a login banner defined when accessing the firewall?
 Is the firewall configured to alarm the administrator
for a potential attack or system failure?

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Auditing and Administration
 Evaluation Parameters:
 What is the procedure followed upon detection
of a particular incident?
 Is in-band management restricted to a limited
number of IP addresses?
 Is a local password assigned to the telnet or SSH
process?
 Is SNMP used to manage the firewall? If no, is the
service disabled?
 Is a time-out defined for idle sessions?

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Auditing and Administration
Standards & Best Practices:
 Logging helps track incident
 The review of logs should be documented
and sent for manager’s review
 Including timestamps in messages allows
tracing network attacks more credibly
 Firewall configuration should be backed up
according to the firewall policy. (whenever a
configuration change takes place)
 The configuration files should be stored
either on tapes or a file server

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Auditing and Administration
Standards & Best Practices:
 Well documented Firewall configuration
 Login banner should be defined on the
firewall
 A documented Incident Management
Procedure
 All management communication between
the management hosts and the firewall
should be encrypted
 The password should be stored in a manner
consistent site's security policy
 If the SNMP service, if not used , should be
explicitly disabled

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Configuration Change Management
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Is there a documented change management
procedure for changes applied on the firewall?
 Standards & Best Practices:
 Since the application software change
management document addresses software
change management procedures, it should be
expanded to include networking devices such as
a firewall too.

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Management & Monitoring
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Checking periodic review for firewall
configuration
 Is the firewall configuration (hard
copy) stored in a secured location?
 Checking whether firewall
administrator details (matrix)
document get updated

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Failover / Redundancy
 Evaluation Parameters:
 Is the firewall configured for proper recovery
from failure or interruption?
 What is the procedure to be followed if the
firewall fails?
 Is the hot standby firewall in sync with active
firewall configuration and software updates?
 Is hot standby/recovery procedures of the firewall
periodically tested?
 Standards & Best Practices:
 HA should be configured, for firewall being a
critical device
 Availability of immediate backup firewall for
uninterrupted business continuity

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Findings and Recommendations
Sr. No Findings / Recommendations
Implementation
Priority
1 The configuration file should be reviewed periodically to check for its accuracy. High
2
Logs should be stored on logging host which is hardened enough. High
3 Firewall is accessible from the whole network. A dedicated machine can be placed inside the
data center to which Admin can login and manage the Cyberoam and Layer-3 switches etc.
High
4
The review of logs should be documented and sent to the manager for review. High
5 Logs of the firewall should be backed up and retained. Log retention time period should be
defined.
Medium
6 As part of the capacity management procedure, periodic reviews of the key parameters such
as memory, CPU should be monitored on the firewall to address current and future needs.
Medium
7
Login banner should be defined on the firewall. Medium
8 A documented Incident Management Procedure should be available for alerts detected by
the firewall.
Medium
9
Firewall baseline and the procedures related to the firewall should be documented. Medium
10 Procedures should address the creation as well as the deletion of the user accounts created
on the firewall.
Low
11
Firewall configuration should be well documented. Low

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Thank you
Contact: sales@cyberoam.com