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Tag: Firewall

FireMon launched FireMon Policy Analyzer 

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FireMon launched FireMon Policy Analyzer, a free firewall assessment tool. It offers organizations a detailed diagnostic report outlining the health of a firewall policy, complete with best practices and recommendations to strengthen their security posture. 

Jody Brazil, CEO of FireMon stated, “The potential for misconfiguring a firewall in a rapidly expanding organizational environment poses real risk to organizations today. Understanding firewall policy security posture and minimizing the potential for human errors when it comes to setting up and managing this complexity cannot be overstated. 

The financial and reputational repercussions of a firewall compromise can potentially result in fines, lost revenues, lawsuits, and long-term damage to the health of the business. Visibility is key to identifying and addressing weaknesses in firewalls and other network security elements. With FireMon Policy Analyzer we provide organizations with an intuitive, powerful and insightful free tool to strengthen their operational environment almost immediately.” 

According to Gartner, configuration mistakes are to blame for 99% of firewall and cloud security failures. Misconfigurations, particularly with regard to a company’s firewalls, are a well-documented cause of the widening cybersecurity gap. Small configuration errors and out-of-date rules can quickly accumulate, making it difficult to manage traditional rules-based firewall setups effectively as environments grow. If these errors are not found and fixed, they can lead to catastrophic network vulnerabilities. 

Organizations can reduce security risks brought on by improperly managed firewall policies by using FireMon Policy Analyzer, which gives security teams a potent tool without the need for setup, installation, or specialized hardware. For typical firewall configurations, Policy Analyzer safely collects the necessary configuration data from a firewall, analyzes the firewall policy, and provides security posture results in seconds. 

Web application firewall in 2022!

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Enterprises employ web application firewall to safeguard their web systems from zero-day exploits, malware attacks, impersonation, and other known and unknown threats and vulnerabilities. A WAF can detect and prevent several of the most critical web application security problems through specialized inspections, which regular network firewalls and other intrusion detection systems (IDSes) and intrusion prevention systems (IPSes) may not be able to perform. Companies that provide products or services through the Internet, such as e-commerce shopping, online banking, and other transactions between customers or business partners, might benefit greatly from WAFs.

A WAF is controlled by a set of rules known as policies. By filtering out harmful communications, these policies try to guard against application vulnerabilities. The usefulness of a WAF is derived in part from the speed and ease with which policy modifications may be deployed, allowing for faster reaction to various attack vectors; for example, rate limiting can be swiftly imposed by updating WAF policies during a DDoS attack.

According to the Infosecurity outlook, the percentage of people who use the internet is consecutively on the rise. It is critical for businesses to build and enhance their online presence as more customers go online and spend more time there. Many companies are already doing this, and others are following suit.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) examines HTTP requests and applies a set of rules to determine which parts of the communication are benign and which are malicious. The GET and POST requests are the most important aspects of HTTP dialogues that a WAF examines. POST requests are used to submit data to a server to alter its state, whereas GET requests are used to get data from the server.

A WAF can analyze and filter the content contained in these HTTP requests in one of two ways, or a hybrid of the two:

Whitelisting: When using a whitelisting strategy, the WAF will block all requests by default, allowing only those that are known to be trustworthy. It gives you a list of IP addresses that are recognized to be safe. Whitelisting requires fewer resources than blacklisting. The disadvantage of using whitelisting is that it may mistakenly block good traffic. While it can be effective and cast a large net, it can also be imprecise.

Blacklisting: A blacklisting strategy allows packets to pass by default and employs preset signatures to restrict harmful online traffic and safeguard websites or web apps from vulnerabilities. It’s a set of rules for detecting malicious packets. Because public websites and web applications receive a lot of traffic from unknown IP addresses that aren’t known to be malicious or benign, blacklisting is more appropriate. The disadvantage of a blacklisting strategy is that it consumes more resources; filtering packets based on specific criteria requires more information than just using trusted IP addresses.

Hybrid: A hybrid security is a typical model that incorporates both blacklisting and whitelisting aspects.

As we are aware of what a web application firewall is for, here are some of the advantages. A WAF could be a fantastic long-term investment for your website because it can:

  • Ensure that rules such as HIPAA and PCI are followed.
  • By automating security checks and traffic monitoring, you can free up resources for your team.
  • SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS) assaults, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks should all be avoided.
  • Prevent customer data from being compromised, protecting trust—and their business.

WAFs are based on a set of rules known as policies and can be deployed as hardware, software, or both in the cloud. These policies instruct the WAF firewall on what to look for in terms of vulnerabilities, gaps, and traffic behavior, as well as what to do if vulnerabilities are discovered. To put it another way, WAF’s policies are what allow it to protect web applications and servers from assaults.

Artera Partners With Deepwatch to Secure Its Infrastructure

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Deepwatch declared Artera Services has chosen Deepwatch’s MDR solution to secure its operations.

Artera is a leading provider of comprehensive vital and critical infrastructure services in the United States, providing maintenance and construction to energy utilities, infrastructure businesses, municipalities, and cooperatives.

Artera began investigating MDR providers in 2021 to reduce the risk of business and consumer disruption. Artera chose Deepwatch for its MDR service, which includes 24/7/365 monitoring with a named squad of experts and integrations with security tools such as Splunk Enterprise and leading endpoint detection and response (EDR), vulnerability management, and firewall solutions, after evaluating several MSSP and MDR providers with the help of their trusted VAR partner, Defy Security.

Director of cyber security at Artera Services, Sean Fuller said, “The transfer of assets, data, and resources is complex, and requires expert-level integration to ensure business continuity and reliability are continuous for our utility customers. It’s very important that I’m able to determine when we are under attack. And that’s where the partnership with Deepwatch comes in. When something does happen, we are in a good position to respond to it, minimize the impact to the company, and restore our security posture as quickly as possible.”

Artera turned to Deepwatch after looking for an MDR supplier that could integrate with their preferred SIEM, Splunk. Artera now has Splunk Enterprise integrated and tailored to provide only high-priority warnings to their tiny in-house team, thanks to Deepwatch’s MDR solution. Through the Deepwatch platform, Artera has complete visibility across the whole security environment, thanks to this integration and powerful endpoint detection and response.

CEO at Deepwatch, Charlie Thomas said, “The security requirements Artera Services has as a supplier for the critical infrastructure and energy sectors are complex. Our mission is to help customers like Artera stay ahead of threats and mitigate risks that could impact its business and their customers’ businesses, which provide energy and utility services to consumers across the United States. Our named squad of security experts gives Artera an extended security team that monitors systems around-the-clock to protect Artera’s service reliability.”

“Artera’s requirements for advanced managed detection and response, including the ability to use a best-in-class security technology stack, led us to recommend Deepwatch. The ability to push data into the Splunk SIEM that was stood up immediately and managed by Deepwatch is a game-changer for Artera, and gives their in-house team opportunities to work on other strategic security projects,” said Justin Domachowski, president and founder of Defy Security.

The FortiGate 3000F enhances network security and integration across all IT infrastructure!

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Fortinet announced FortiGate 3000F, the latest Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) supported by NP7 and CP9 for NP7 and CP9 for Fortinet security processing units (SPU) to support organizations in the construction of Mixed-ITs that accelerate digital innovation and the growth of the petroleum business.

 With network integration and built-in security, flexible, automated, and traditionally integrated Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) integration, the FortiGate 3000F enables the largest, securely secure networks that connect seamlessly to secure communications without compromising security performance. The FortiGate 3000F also offers industry-leading performance statistics with Computer Security Rates that can be up to 6x of greater connection per second than competing offers.

Organizations today must balance the pressures of accelerating digital innovation and ensure that critical applications meet specific compliance, performance, control, and strategic business needs. In fact, because of these challenges, “custom and classic applications – about 55% of business plans – are gradually moving towards cloud-based options1.”

 “Hybrid compute will exist in the foreseeable future. The FortiGate 3000F, powered by Fortinet NP7 and CP9 security processing units, continues to move the performance bar forward, but more importantly, it adds a number of modified cybersecurity applications to the standard network firewall. These applications include a central SD-WAN hub, SSL testing, and a zero-network access proxy. We believe it is because of these new processes that Fort Fort has placed # 1 for three consecutive years in the Enterprise Data Center Use Case in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report for Network Firewalls,” said John Maddison, Product EVP, and CMO, Fortinet.

BOTS subsidiary, Cyber Security Group LLC, announced Web Application Firewall (WAF) solution to target global cybersecurity market

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BOTS, Inc., a global tech firm that specialises in Blockchain-based solutions such as decentralized finance applications for the financial industry, consulting, mining equipment repair, cybersecurity solutions, crypto mining and insurance, announced that its subsidiary, Cyber Security Group LLC, has launched Web Application Firewall (WAF), a proprietary software solution to protect web applications.

The cybersecurity market is being driven by rising cybersecurity events and rules demanding their reporting. Cybercrime, which includes data damage and destruction, stolen money, lost property, intellectual property theft, and other sectors, costs the globe around USD 600 billion each year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and McAfee.

WAF protects against application vulnerabilities and data breaches. The following are some important advantages:

  •     Protection from web attacks and DDoS
  •     Controls access and authentication
  •     Automates and orchestrates security
  •     Protects applications and APIs
  •     Protects against business logic attacks
  •     Protects ecosystem around Blockchain
  •     Blocks malicious bots and automated attacks
  •     Protects from XSS & SQL injections

BOTS’ Cyber Security Group LLC subsidiary is an ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified Information Security Management System that seeks to capitalise on the fast-growing worldwide cyber security market with its exclusive range of SaaS products. WAF has been successfully battle-tested by financial services and e-commerce enterprises over a two-year pilot program and is now available to businesses all across the world.

Web Application Firewall – Everything You Need to Know

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Web Application Firewall – Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a form of application firewall that protects web service from various attacks. Application protection is a security layer that can defend against a variety of application layer security threats that aren’t normally covered by a traditional network layer Intrusion Detection Systems. By inspecting HTTP/HTTPS request packets and web traffic patterns, the WAF ensures that the web service is not jeopardized. It defends web applications against cross-site scripting (XSS), file inclusion and SQL injection attacks. The WAF prevents attacks by blocking HTTP requests and IP addresses when it detects some kind of security threat in compliance with the configuration file.

Why Web Application Firewall ?

Web applications are easily available and provide a convenient entry point to useful data, hence they are a prime target for cyber-attacks. These online services must be protected from current and emerging cyber-threats without compromising efficiency and quality. Because of the consistent changes in applications, security teams struggle to keep up with updating security rules that properly protect web services. This can lead to security flaws and vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can take advantage of, resulting in expensive data breaches. Additionally, businesses seek out security technologies that can scale with their applications to meet rising consumer demand, ensuring that the web as a service remains viable and are adequately protected without compromising the customer’s experience.

Features of Web Application Firewall are –

  • Configuration and Control – Administrators can use the Web Application Firewall to build policies for compliance, regulatory, and security purposes. Administrators can build comprehensive and flexible policies as required, including URL rewriting, SSL/TLS validation and compliance, using the WAF policy engine. WAF detects attack chains automatically, from eavesdropping to data theft and backdoor setup. Instead of working through thousands of possible attacks, security experts are only alerted to the most critical threats. Security teams can specify the protection level for each program, and WAF can determine what to do in various scenarios. In the event, if the device configuration fails, previously saved settings can be restored automatically eliminating the manual work.
  • Reporting and Analytics – WAF provides real-time insight into your web traffic and can be used to generate new dashboard reporting rules or warnings. It gives security teams fine control of how the metrics are displayed, allowing them to track anything from individual rules to all inbound traffic. In addition, WAF provides detailed logging by collecting the header data of each inspected web request that can be used in analytics and security automation. WAF takes a large number of warnings and condenses them into a limited, manageable collection of security events, this gives security professionals a frictionless operating experience.
  • Integration and Security – WAF virtual application can be installed and scaled up easily on-premises with no special hardware to purchase or maintain. WAF can easily integrate into a company’s information security management system, which aids in the provision of advanced multilayer security. Administrators can develop special rules to detect confidential data like account numbers, passwords, financial transactions and insurance records. In addition, rules may be used to hide information from third parties, including administrators that use WAF. WAF aids in the monitoring of all traffic.

The majority of previous time-consuming and physical activities are automated with online services in all enterprise sectors like IT, finance, manufacturing, telecom, media to government. With the rise in cyber-attacks, these organizations must secure their online applications and the safest and most commonly used solution is a Web Application Firewall.

InfoSecurity Outlook Magazine focuses on keeping track of Information Security, Data Security, Cloud Security, IoT Security and Fraud Management related technology to help entrepreneurs protect their organizational data from threats and misuse.

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