• Latest
  • Trending
How to Determine if Your Network Security is Working

How to Determine if Your Network Security is Working

December 15, 2021
Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

September 6, 2022
Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

September 6, 2022
8 Most Common Causes of a Data Breach

5.7bn data entries found exposed on Chinese VPN

August 18, 2022
Fibre optic interconnection linking Cameroon and Congo now operational

Fibre optic interconnection linking Cameroon and Congo now operational

July 15, 2022
Ericsson and MTN Rwandacell Discuss their Long-Term Partnership

Ericsson and MTN Rwandacell Discuss their Long-Term Partnership

July 15, 2022
Airtel Africa Purchases $42M Worth of Additional Spectrum

Airtel Africa Purchases $42M Worth of Additional Spectrum

July 15, 2022
Huawei steps up drive for Kenyan talent

Huawei steps up drive for Kenyan talent

July 15, 2022
TSMC predicts Q3 revenue boost thanks to increased iPhone 13 demand

TSMC predicts Q3 revenue boost thanks to increased iPhone 13 demand

July 15, 2022
Facebook to allow up to five profiles tied to one account

Facebook to allow up to five profiles tied to one account

July 15, 2022
Top 10 apps built and managed in Ghana

Top 10 apps built and managed in Ghana

July 15, 2022
MTN Group to Host the 2nd Edition of the MoMo API Hackathon

MTN Group to Host the 2nd Edition of the MoMo API Hackathon

July 15, 2022
KIOXIA Introduce JEDEC XFM Removable Storage with PCIe/NVMe Spec

KIOXIA Introduce JEDEC XFM Removable Storage with PCIe/NVMe Spec

July 15, 2022
  • Consumer Watch
  • Kids Page
  • Directory
  • Events
  • Reviews
Tuesday, 7 February, 2023
  • Login
itechnewsonline.com
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Africa Tech
  • InfoSEC
  • Data Science
  • Data Storage
  • Business
  • Opinion
Subscription
Advertise
No Result
View All Result
itechnewsonline.com
No Result
View All Result

How to Determine if Your Network Security is Working

by ITECHNEWS
December 15, 2021
in Leading Stories, Opinion
0 0
0
How to Determine if Your Network Security is Working

I talked about the MITRE ATT&CK framework and how it can help you determine possible threats and threat actors’ techniques so that you can better focus your limited resources on the more likely threats.

The next question you might have is, “Am I being attacked?” and “Are my defenses working?”

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

To answer that question, you need to know what is happening on your network. To know what is happening on your network, you need to log activity from a few different sources.

Take your typical network that consists of a wired network (the PC connected to the switch) and some wireless laptops (connected to the wireless access point). The switch and the access point connect to a router and then to the firewall.

Network diagram consisting of wired PC and wireless laptop

If you want to know what is going on in your network, you want to see the activity (traffic) that is flowing on the wireless access point, the switch, the router and the firewall. To do that, you have to log the devices and traffic on your wireless and wired networks as well the flow of traffic between the wired and wireless network and the flow of traffic between the router and the firewall.

Typically, you would have the access logs or system logs from each of these devices sent to a central collector, called (surprise!) the system log server, or syslog server. Your network would now look something like this:

Network diagram with syslog recording devices and traffic

Now that you are collecting this traffic information on a daily basis, you can get a good sense of what ‘normal’ traffic looks like. And you can then run searches (usually automated) that look at the log data and tell you if any odd or suspicious traffic is occurring.

You can search the syslog server for bad traffic coming from the internet to your firewall and confirm that the firewall is blocking the traffic. Or, you can confirm that you only allow certain kinds of traffic to leave your network to prevent private or sensitive data from leaving your network (think PII, HIPAA, intellectual property, CUI, etc.) via Dropbox or Google Drive or Box, for example. By checking the firewall logs, you can tell that your data is not leaving your network through the firewall.

You can search the syslog server for unknown devices on the wireless or wired network. You would already know which devices should be on the network because you should already know what devices you own or have provisioned for your users. If a new device shows up in the wireless log or the wired (switch) log, you then know that you have to find out what that device is. How did it get there? Did someone bring in their own wireless access device so they can get a better signal in their office? Did they bring in a wireless printer so they can print in their office? By looking at the logs for those two networks, you can determine that.

Your network team knows if traffic from the wired network should be allowed to flow to the wireless network or flow in the opposite direction. Maybe you allow that kind of traffic flow; maybe you don’t. Either way, with a syslog server you can confirm that only approved traffic is flowing on the wireless or wired networks by looking at the traffic logs from the router.

This is a simple example to help you visualize how collecting this network traffic allows you to see if the controls (access control lists [ACLs], firewall rules, network access control [NAC] rules, etc.) are working as you expect.

In my next blog post, I’ll add in other data points (antivirus software, Windows event logs, web server logs, etc.) you can gather from the syslog server to give you an even better picture of what is happening on your network.

By John Bruggeman, Security Boulevard

ShareTweetShare
Plugin Install : Subscribe Push Notification need OneSignal plugin to be installed.

Search

No Result
View All Result

Recent News

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

September 6, 2022
Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

September 6, 2022
8 Most Common Causes of a Data Breach

5.7bn data entries found exposed on Chinese VPN

August 18, 2022

About What We Do

itechnewsonline.com

We bring you the best Premium Tech News.

Recent News With Image

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade

September 6, 2022
Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy

September 6, 2022

Recent News

  • Inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Women and Youth in Trade September 6, 2022
  • Instagram fined €405m over children’s data privacy September 6, 2022
  • 5.7bn data entries found exposed on Chinese VPN August 18, 2022
  • Fibre optic interconnection linking Cameroon and Congo now operational July 15, 2022
  • Home
  • InfoSec
  • Opinion
  • Africa Tech
  • Data Storage

© 2021-2022 iTechNewsOnline.Com - Powered by BackUPDataSystems

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Africa Tech
  • InfoSEC
  • Data Science
  • Data Storage
  • Business
  • Opinion

© 2021-2022 iTechNewsOnline.Com - Powered by BackUPDataSystems

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Go to mobile version