Heavy Metal In The Data Center
Metal heads have nothing over data center managers.
Understanding Firepower DNS Policies
One cool feature added with Firepower version 6 is probably best described as DNS-based Security Intelligence, Inspection and Sinkholing. The thought is pretty simple. If a host issues a DNS request for a host that is known to be malicious, that response is manipulated. The manipulated response can be host not found, an alternative IP address or no response at all. This allows an administrator to provide another layer of protection by preventing hosts ready access to the IP addresses of known malicious hosts.
So the first question that might come to mind is how are hosts on the Internet classified as bad. The short answer is that Talos maintains lists of known bad fully qualified domain names (fqdn). These are actually categorized and delivered into the Firepower solution as a feed. Each of the following category can be selected into one or multiple DNS Rules.
DNS Feeds and Lists
- DNS Attackers
- DNS Bogons
- DNS Bots
- DNS CnC
- DNS Dga
- DNS Exploitkit
- DNS Malware
- DNS Open_proxy
- DNS Open_relay
- DNS Phishing
- DNS Response
- DNS Spam
- DNS Suspicious
- DNS Tor_exit_node
In addition to the above, there are two built in lists that can be controlled by the UI.
- Global-Blacklist-for-DNS
- Global-Whitelist-for-DNS
The final way Continue reading
On Their Way Out: Proprietary Security Appliances in Branch Offices
The attack landscape has broadened.
ADP + Docker Datacenter Delivers Security and Scale for Both Legacy and Microservices Applications
At DockerCon 2016, the second day’s general session featured products and stories related to Docker running in the enterprise. From product demonstrations of integrated security features, to deployment templates to a session featuring Keith Fulton, CTO of ADP, speaking about their evolution to a tech company and how Docker Datacenter enables them to ship faster, securely at scale across apps big and small.
ADP is the largest global provider of cloud based human capital management (HCM) solutions. ADP has over 630,000 clients that span more than 35 million users in over 100 countries. More than just payroll services, ADP delivers solutions across the entire spectrum of HCM for their customers in each one of these areas with right sized versions for SMBs, mid market and large enterprises.
This breadth and depth of solutions developed over the last 60 years does lead to some complexity in product development. ADP views this as a transition from a services company to a technology company and Docker is the key to future acceleration. Speeding up product development, not just in writing more code faster, but also helping ADP ship the resulting end product faster. Docker enables them to have a common Continue reading
Golang: Exercising pointers, interfaces, functions and wrapping
This article is inspired by my somewhat confused learning experience with interfaces, methods and wrapping functions in Golang. Needless to say, there was some serious learning to do here given first of all I was a C junkie then moved swiftly to Python for ease and speed in the networking world. Lots to learn.
Golang
The reason for concentration on Golang? It’s simple, powerful, quick to compile and massively supported with a vibrant community. A little like the film ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’, I take the tenet of ‘guns for show, knives for a pro’ approach with Python and Golang; roughly translating to Python for proof-of-concepts, speed and simple apps, Golang for performance and services. Therefore knowing how interfaces, pointers, types and methods based on types are critical knowledge components!
Show me the code
The code below is an exercise of interfaces, function wrapping, pointers and mixing usage of them all. It does not cover why you might want to do it, so go and learn that yourself. Pointers are great for highly optimised applications and can also save memory if used correctly. With Golang’s garbage collection, worrying about freeing memory is not an issue. Exercise 6 will Continue reading
Meraki MX – URL Filtering
Over the past few days, I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at some of the advanced capabilities of modern Cisco Firewalls. My most recent testing was done with the Meraki MX 60 cloud managed Firewall product. What I have to say is this is the easiest to configure content filter I’ve ever seen. So I just wanted to take a moment and share what that looks like.
As with all Meraki products, the MX is completely cloud managed. So to manage the device, and administrator must access the Meraki Dashboard. Once authenticated, it is simply necessary to choose Security Appliance then Content Filtering from the menu on the right.
Once on the content filtering page, the policy is self explanatory. The top section is for categories that should be blocked. While the box appears to be a free form entry field, clicking anywhere in the area presents a list of categories to choose from. The bottom section allows for manual whitelisting and blacklisting. To get a better idea on how the match is performed and the format requirements of the block criteria, the “Learn how URL blocking works” link may be selected.
For those wanting to see the complete category list Continue reading
Internets of Interest – 2 Jul 2016
The post Internets of Interest – 2 Jul 2016 appeared first on EtherealMind.
SDxCentral Weekly News Roundup — July 1, 2016
Martin Fink, CTO of HPE Labs, is retiring.
Avaya & Inocybe Test SDN at an IoT Scale
To serve IoT, SDN will need to grow out.