Palo Alto Networks Global Protect SSL-VPN JumpStart Guide
This guide will help you configure your Palo Alto Networks SSL VPN as easily as possible. Click here to download in PDF format. Web format coming soon.
Orange County Tech-Security Conference 06/07/12
John Bisaillon of Digital Scepter will be demonstrating how to rapidly find threats, malware and indicators of compromise across the network in seconds. Where other tools might take hours or days to collect data from tens of thousands of nodes, Tanium will take seconds. We’ll be demonstrating how this can impact your security processes.
Malware is constantly evolving and it is difficult if not impossible to protect the endpoint using anti-malware signatures (e.g. AV, anti-spyware). Eventually prevention will fail. Therefore quick, accurate methods are needed to detect malware without the use of signatures. By observing common behaviors we can find the presence of malware with high confidence. Such traits often include opening listening ports, creating new services, weakening security settings, adding autostart capability, and more. We conclude by showing a new tool that can look for these pieces of evidence over an entire network in just seconds.
San Diego Tech-Security Conference 04/12/12
John Bisaillon of Digital Scepter will be demonstrating how to rapidly find threats, malware and indicators of compromise across the network in seconds. Where other tools might take hours or days to collect data from tens of thousands of nodes, Tanium will take seconds. We’ll be demonstrating how this can impact your security processes.
Malware is constantly evolving and it is difficult if not impossible to protect the endpoint using anti-malware signatures (e.g. AV, anti-spyware). Eventually prevention will fail. Therefore quick, accurate methods are needed to detect malware without the use of signatures. By observing common behaviors we can find the presence of malware with high confidence. Such traits often include opening listening ports, creating new services, weakening security settings, adding autostart capability, and more. We conclude by showing a new tool that can look for these pieces of evidence over an entire network in just seconds.
How a Next-Generation Firewall Can Keep Your Data Center Secure and Productive
Whatever the scale of your business or organization, the network infrastructure of your data center is often just as vital as the premises you operate from or the utilities that power your office. In modern business, data is your most valuable asset, and keeping this data protected against misuse and malware is incredibly important. Moreover, with almost every employee making use of networked IT in their day-to-day routine, maintaining compliance with acceptable use policies can be a difficult and complex task.
Unfortunately, the perimeter protection technology routinely deployed in data center environments is not always able to keep up with the developing trends in network use and its associated risks. These traditional firewalls utilize port blocking and IP blocking technology, but fail to provide detailed information regarding network use for more flexible network administration. By examining where user traffic is originating from or being sent to, as well as the application generating the traffic, and the content of the traffic itself, next-generation firewalls provide a robust, flexible, and highly adjustable solution for network perimeter protection.
In a recently published article, Securing Your Datacenter with a Next-Generation Palo Alto Networks Firewall, experienced Internet security specialist Digital Scepter discusses the limited capability of traditional port blocking firewalls to fight the battle against modern network integrity threats. In addition, Digital Scepter outlines the key benefits of choosing a Palo Alto Networks firewall for your data center, including the distinctive, unique features that make Palo Alto Networks firewalls an increasingly popular choice for keeping mission-critical data safe.
Security Monitoring: Steps Taken by Digital Scepter to Avoid Sneakernet
As the networks organizations depend on every day to do business become more complex and advanced, they also have a tendency to become more geographically diverse. Where a network administrator’s entire jurisdiction may have once been limited to one physical location, an ever increasing culture of employees who remain connected to the network at all times often results in networks that exist over vast distances. The job of a network administrator is harder than ever, and the task of monitoring nodes and rolling out changes across the entire network has become increasingly time-consuming.
The most obvious solution is to resort to the sneakernet, i.e., physically visiting each individual location and working hands-on with every piece of hardware. In practice, this could mean an administrator traveling the globe to rename some files, or perhaps resorting to mailing unsecure data transfer devices such as CD and DVD storage or USB devices. Neither of these is good for security or good for the workload of the average IT administrator. To help organizations of all sizes avoid sneakernet, Digital Scepter provides the latest in systems management tools: Tanium.
In this article, we discuss sneakernet and the potential impact on an organization if a network is managed using such slow methods. We also explore Tanium and the stunning features that make this software the leading choice in systems management. Finally, the major benefits of choosing Tanium from Digital Scepter are illustrated by some of the most frequently encountered use case examples.
The First Step to Network Security
In our years of experience providing high quality perimeter protection and web security services, we at Digital Scepter have given businesses of all sizes the insight and expertise they require to navigate the complex – and often dangerous – arena of network security. Whether you hope to combat the threats of malicious attacks or employee misuse, and whether you use firewall hardware to mitigate incoming traffic or control access to applications and services, keeping your network secure is possibly the single most important task for any network administrator – and as 2012 gets underway, now is the right time to fully examine your existing security setup.
It can be difficult for organizations to know where to begin when it comes to improving their network security. How do you choose the right kind of perimeter protection solution for your unique business needs? Where should you focus your budget and attention to improve security dramatically, at a cost that makes sense for you? Learning which technology and policies you need to implement on your network is a process that begins with accurately assessing your existing network infrastructure.
At Digital Scepter, we encourage every organization to have a detailed breakdown of their network. Across hardware and software, creating an asset list is the first step in better understanding the security needs of your network, what you are doing to meet these demands, and how you can improve your network to keep your mission-critical or confidential data safe.
Digital Scepter Becomes a Palo Alto Networks Platinum Level Partner
For anybody who is involved in the complex world of IT or network administration, keeping up with the latest and most revolutionary technology is incredibly important. In network security and perimeter protection, threats such as malware become increasingly sophisticated, and the methods by which your users circumvent your acceptable use policies become even more difficult to detect. The only way to keep your network security current is to implement the most recent advances in firewall and access policy devices.
Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls are specifically designed to correct the inadequacies of more traditional port protocol firewalls in combating the latest security threats. While a conventional firewall allows security rules to be established based on port number alone, PAN perimeter protection facilitates true granular control. Using unique technologies called App-ID, User-ID, and Content-ID, Palo Alto Networks firewalls accurately identify which applications are being used on your network, who is using them, and the specific data that is being transferred. Armed with this information, your organization is better placed to win the war against malware and network misuse.
At Digital Scepter, we quickly identified hardware from Palo Alto Networks as being the future of the firewall, and invested our resources into becoming a leading provider of Palo Alto Networks firewall devices. Now, as a result of our longstanding relationship with Palo Alto Networks, we are proud to announce that we have become a certified Palo Alto Networks Platinum Level Partner, marking our ongoing commitment to delivering the best network security in the marketplace.
Securing Your Data Center with a Next-Generation Palo Alto Networks Firewall
Whether you are in control of an enterprise data center that keeps your employees connected and productive, or you run an Internet-facing data center that supplies remote functionality to hosted users, one thing is consistently true: your business is at constant risk. The movement of traffic into, out of, and throughout your network poses the immediate threats of misuse and malicious attack; therefore, monitoring and controlling your network data with the best firewall protection available should be at the forefront of your network design priorities.
With network technology advancing at such an astonishing rate, keeping your business protected against the latest dangers can feel like an overwhelming, time-consuming, and often confusing process. In the past ten or so years, the number of counterproductive ways for employees to spend their time online has dramatically increased, with the dawn of social media and browser-based entertainment marking a downturn in workplace productivity. Online trends have also had a significant impact on Internet-facing data centers, where hosted accounts have more sophisticated ways to breach acceptable usage policies.
In this article, we discuss how the more traditional port protocol firewall device is no longer able to keep up with the recent trends in Internet use, and how – for dependable protection – the Palo Alto Networks (PAN) next-generation firewall provides the robust security your network requires. We also explore how the advanced technology within a next-generation perimeter protection device can help keep your business connected, available, and productive at all times.
Application Visibility and Control
Do you know with certainty what applications your users are running on the network? Just because your firewall is only allowing, say, ports 80, 443, and 53 doesn’t guarantee that only web browsing, secure web browsing, and DNS query traffic is passing thru your firewall!
Did you know that:
- Instead of establishing new server port numbers, legitimate applications are now designed to run over standard, commonly allowed ports. For example, Dropbox uses ports 443 and/or 80 to allow users to upload and download files to their cloud-based storage service. Do you know with certainty that your employees aren’t uploading sensitive corporate data to Dropbox?
- Many applications are designed to dynamically probe your firewall to find an open port. For example, each time Skype starts running it probes your firewall to see what ports are open and then communicates over this port. If you then close the first port Skype picks, Skype will then move on to the next open port. It is impossible for a traditional firewall to block Skype unless you close every port on your firewall!
- Malware often communicates over ports 80, 443, and 53. For example, Conficker relies on port 80. (Source)
Traditional stateful-inspection firewalls will permit all the aforementioned traffic, both legitimate and malicious, because stateful-inspection firewalls only make decisions based upon port numbers and session state – they are not capable of looking at the application layer data which is needed to identify the true application.
The bottom line is this:
Do you really know what applications are running on your network?
And if not, how can you be sure that malicious, tunneled communication isn’t occuring on allowed ports?
Many firewall vendors claim to identify networked applications, however their solutions include a ‘bolt-on’ approach that is not only complex to manage and dramatically reduces throughput, but they simply are not effective in correctly identifying the applications. Digital Scepter can demonstrate true application visibility and control using a Palo Alto Networks next generation firewall which correctly identifies the applications which are passing traffic, regardless of protocol, port, or evasive tactic. In addition, a Palo Alto Network firewall can even identify applications running inside encrypted SSL tunnels. And once you can identify the application, you have the power to either permit or deny this traffic or you could rate-limit it.
Correctly knowing all the applications would be the first step in creating a positive security model, where you permit only known, desired applications and deny everything else. Using a positive security model implemented on a Palo Alto Networks next generation firewall dramatically reduces risk because malware and other risk-inherent applications would not be permitted, even if they communicate over permitted ports. In addition, zero day malware would be blocked as well since it would not be identified as an allowed application.
Contact Digital Scepter today and let us help you identify and secure your networked applications with a Palo Alto Networks firewall!
Palo Alto Networks HealthCheck
What is a health check?
Digital Scepter’s certified network security engineers are Palo Alto Networks experts. They will access your firewall via a secure remote connection to tune and verify your firewall settings to assure you that the devices are updated, configured correctly and giving you the return on your investment that you need. It’s also a good time to consider new design options for your network in the future.
Benefits
- Fix issues before they turn into problems
- Proactive analysis of firewall policies, log files and settings.
- Reduce management costs and put time back into your day
- Ensure settings and policies are compliant with the latest best practices and threat signatures.
HealthCheck program includes:
- Analysis of firewall settings and policies to trojans, phone-home and other attacks
- Software ands subscription update settings and verification
- Review of HA configurations and perform scheduled testing
- Check and report on firewall traffic statistics for growth planning
- Check and report on VPN and Global Protect
- Evaluate security, captive portal and QOS rulesets
- Evaluate and adjust URL filtering profiles
- Deliver system reports of application use, URL categories and threats found
- Recommend actions based on findings
Subscriptions
Available one-time, monthly or quarterly.