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Cisco Network Security Solutions Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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The Cisco Secure Network Foundation helps small and medium-sized businesses control costs in two ways: first, by avoiding the unnecessary costs associated with security breaches; and second, by using multifunction, affordable integrated security components that grow with businesses as their needs change. Integrated security simplifies network management and maintenance costs, reducing the total cost of network ownership. Network security breaches have both obvious and hidden costs. For example, many security breaches, such as relatively innocuous viruses, cause little damage, and the obvious costs associated with them are the time and resources spent cleaning them off infected business systems. Costs rise with the number of infected systems, making protection and quick detection a money-saving endeavor. Less obvious costs include work time lost while employees’ infected computers are being cleaned. Examples of hidden costs include lost opportunities, lost customers, diminished business reputations, or legal costs associated with security breaches. These costs, while less common, can be very large. Last year online crime cost British business. The Cisco Secure Network Foundation solution helps businesses avoid both the obvious and hidden costs associated with security breaches, reducing business risk, and increasing credibility and customer confidence. Small and medium-sized businesses do not have the staff resources or capital budgets to deploy and maintain complex security solutions. The Cisco Secure Network Foundation is secure, reliable, and simple, reducing their total cost of network ownership so organizations can focus on their business, not on their networks. It easily adapts to changing business needs and security conditions, making sure costs stay in line with business growth.

Cisco IronPort Email Security Appliances (1) Fight spam, viruses, and blended threats to protect organizations of all sizes with industry-leading security capabilities (2) Prevent data leaks, enforces compliance, and protects reputation and brand assets, (3) Reduces downtime, simplifies administration of corporate mail systems, and eases the technical support burden, and (4) Is currently deployed by eight of 10 largest ISPs and more than 40 percent of the world's largest enterprises

Cisco TrustSec (1) Provides network access controls based on a consistent policy for users, endpoint devices, and networking devices (such as routers and switches), (2) Uses end user, device identity and other information to provide precise security policy controls both at the edge and through the network, (3) Is ideal for organizations that need to control how a user or device is granted access, what security policies endpoint devices must meet, and which resources authorized users may access, and (4) Helps secure data paths in the switching environment with IEEE 802.1AE standard encryption and, with Cisco switching infrastructure, maintains control so that critical security applications such as firewalls, intrusion prevention, and content inspection can retain visibility into data streams

Network security involves all activities that organizations, enterprises, and institutions undertake to protect the value and ongoing usability of assets and the integrity and continuity of operations. An effective network security strategy requires identifying threats and then choosing the most effective set of tools to combat them.

Denial-of-service attacks prevent the normal use or management of communication services, and may take the form of either a targeted attack on a particular service or a broad, incapacitating attack. For example, a network may be flooded with messages that cause a degradation of service or possibly a complete collapse if a server shuts down under abnormal loading. Another example is rapid and repeated requests to a web server, which bar legitimate access to others. Denial-of-service attacks are frequently reported for internet-connected services. Because complete prevention of active attacks is unrealistic, a strategy of detection followed by recovery is more appropriate.

Security testing is an essential component of improving the security posture of your organization. Organizations that have an organized, systematic, comprehensive, on-going, and priority driven security testing regimen are in a much better position to make prudent investments to enhance the security posture of their systems.

Look at the big picture. The results of routine testing may indicate that an organization should readdress its systems security architecture. Some organizations may need to step back and undergo a formal process of identifying the security requirements for many of its systems, and then begin a process of reworking its security architecture accordingly. This process will result in increased security inefficiency of operations with fewer costs incurred from incident response operations.

The standard one-time password dictionary from RFC 1760 helps maintain backwards compatibility with the various deployed systems, however, support for hexadecimal format passwords will also be mandatory to implement. The standard might specify pass phrase quality checks for the secret pass phrase. The standard will be specified so as to eliminate any possible conflict with the Bellcore trademark on the term S/Key.

Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances (1) Combine firewall, VPN, and optional content security and intrusion prevention to distribute network security across your operations, (2) Provide threat defense and highly secure communications services to stop attacks before they affect business continuity, (3) Reduce deployment and operational costs while delivering comprehensive network security for networks of all sizes, and (4) Support a wide range of environments from small businesses to large enterprises.

Auditors face some challenges when reviewing router and firewall configurations. I'm going to discuss a few of them in this article. My assumption is that there is a device hardening standard in place, which points out the key elements of configuration. I am also assuming configuration review is only small, and not the most important part of audit program (design assessment, change control, access control, etc... have to be done as well).