Automated Security Configuration Management

Automated Security Configuration Management PDF Author: Jinglu Xu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Automation
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
The risk and severity of cyber attacks have increased over the last few years. With the continuous advancements and innovation in Information Technology (IT), new vendors and products are constantly emerging to provide security solutions. Meanwhile, the multi-vendor environment together with the huge diversity of siloed devices requires new approaches for tackling the complexity and heterogeneity in the management of security configuration. Network security plays a critical role in protecting the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of organizations' network and data. However, the move to a network configuration standard is long overdue. The traditional way of managing individual vendor Command-Line Interface (CLI) cannot easily be programmed and thus requires domain expertise and experience with the target system. In this thesis, we aim to eliminate tedious, costly, and prone to error manual tasks by automating the process of network security configuration management. To address the organizational security requirements while removing the dependence on device specific configuration scripts, we propose the architecture of the Automated Security Configuration Management Tool (ASCMT). ASCMT allows IT administrators to express security requirements in a vendor-independent policy language minimizing the required expert-level security knowledge or consideration of the underlying device specific code. One of the major novelties of ASCMT is the introduction of a Configuration Agent that controls other tool components to produce configuration solutions like a human operator. By using ontology mapping, our tool can translate high-level security policies into low-level configurations, regardless of device function and matching semantics. The resulting configuration baseline will be automatically implemented and enforced in the system. In addition, controlling configuration changes and monitoring are conducted to ensure the configuration baseline can fulfil new security requirements in a dynamic network environment. Due to the limited time frame, it is impossible to implement the framework fully. Instead, we present an implementation of automated firewall configuration management with the focus on packet filtering configuration as a proof of concept. It can be concluded that automation can reduce the dependency of network devices on human intervention and therefore cut costs and complexity. In the future, we will provide a full implementation of ASCMT and extend it to other security domains. We will also apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies to improve its responsiveness and effectiveness.

Automated Security Configuration Management

Automated Security Configuration Management PDF Author: Jinglu Xu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Automation
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
The risk and severity of cyber attacks have increased over the last few years. With the continuous advancements and innovation in Information Technology (IT), new vendors and products are constantly emerging to provide security solutions. Meanwhile, the multi-vendor environment together with the huge diversity of siloed devices requires new approaches for tackling the complexity and heterogeneity in the management of security configuration. Network security plays a critical role in protecting the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of organizations' network and data. However, the move to a network configuration standard is long overdue. The traditional way of managing individual vendor Command-Line Interface (CLI) cannot easily be programmed and thus requires domain expertise and experience with the target system. In this thesis, we aim to eliminate tedious, costly, and prone to error manual tasks by automating the process of network security configuration management. To address the organizational security requirements while removing the dependence on device specific configuration scripts, we propose the architecture of the Automated Security Configuration Management Tool (ASCMT). ASCMT allows IT administrators to express security requirements in a vendor-independent policy language minimizing the required expert-level security knowledge or consideration of the underlying device specific code. One of the major novelties of ASCMT is the introduction of a Configuration Agent that controls other tool components to produce configuration solutions like a human operator. By using ontology mapping, our tool can translate high-level security policies into low-level configurations, regardless of device function and matching semantics. The resulting configuration baseline will be automatically implemented and enforced in the system. In addition, controlling configuration changes and monitoring are conducted to ensure the configuration baseline can fulfil new security requirements in a dynamic network environment. Due to the limited time frame, it is impossible to implement the framework fully. Instead, we present an implementation of automated firewall configuration management with the focus on packet filtering configuration as a proof of concept. It can be concluded that automation can reduce the dependency of network devices on human intervention and therefore cut costs and complexity. In the future, we will provide a full implementation of ASCMT and extend it to other security domains. We will also apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies to improve its responsiveness and effectiveness.

Automated Security Management

Automated Security Management PDF Author: Ehab Al-Shaer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319014331
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
In this contributed volume, leading international researchers explore configuration modeling and checking, vulnerability and risk assessment, configuration analysis, and diagnostics and discovery. The authors equip readers to understand automated security management systems and techniques that increase overall network assurability and usability. These constantly changing networks defend against cyber attacks by integrating hundreds of security devices such as firewalls, IPSec gateways, IDS/IPS, authentication servers, authorization/RBAC servers, and crypto systems. Automated Security Management presents a number of topics in the area of configuration automation. Early in the book, the chapter authors introduce modeling and validation of configurations based on high-level requirements and discuss how to manage the security risk as a result of configuration settings of network systems. Later chapters delve into the concept of configuration analysis and why it is important in ensuring the security and functionality of a properly configured system. The book concludes with ways to identify problems when things go wrong and more. A wide range of theoretical and practical content make this volume valuable for researchers and professionals who work with network systems.

A Guide to Understanding Configuration Management in Trusted Systems

A Guide to Understanding Configuration Management in Trusted Systems PDF Author: James N. Menendez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Configuration management
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description


Guide to Understanding Configuration Management in Trusted Systems

Guide to Understanding Configuration Management in Trusted Systems PDF Author: James N. Menendez
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 9780788122286
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
A set of good practices related to configuration management in Automated Data Processing systems employed for processing classified and other information. Provides guidance to developers of trusted systems on what configuration management is and how it may be implemented in the development and life-cycle of a trusted system.

Improving Security Via Effective Central Configuration Management

Improving Security Via Effective Central Configuration Management PDF Author: Jason Aguilar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Configuration Management is the process of maintaining systems in a desired state. [1] Central Configuration Management is the process of maintaining that state from a centralized location in order to maintain consistent control over the configuration of systems and applications. The process of configuration management is essential to a functional business environment. By ensuring consistent configurations for all systems and applications it is easier and more efficient to add, remove, and maintain systems and applications on a network. Central configuration Management is also necessary to ensure all parts of any organization are using consistent configurations and not deterring from known good configurations which could create vulnerabilities. There are two significant benefits to central configuration management: Automation and Communication. Automation is the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services. [2] It increases efficiency and reduces the time required to configure systems. Communication is achieved through central configuration management because it uses a methodology of shared knowledge. In a central configuration management system, all parties in an organization share information and toolsets which allows for better transition of information. These concepts are vital for an organization to maintain, improve, and advance in the world of Information Technology. This project is designed to use the principles of configuration management to improve security and reliability of service for Company X. The goal is to create a working prototype of a central configuration management tool which could later be implemented on a production level to address the improvements requested by Company X. This project will identify which tool to implement by conducting research into commonly used tools and companies that provide them. Research will be conducted on daily operations for Company X to identify specific requirements for the project. A sandbox testing environment will be created to develop and test the chosen tool. Results of testing will be documented and provided to Company X for consideration of implementation. The project will conclude with a complete synopsis of recommendations for future advancements and a detailed implementation plan for production.

Towards Automatic Configuration of Access Control

Towards Automatic Configuration of Access Control PDF Author: Nazia Badar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computer networks
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Access control provide means to implement organizational security policies to both of its physical and electronic resources. To date, several access control mechanisms, including Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Discretionary Access Control (DAC) have been proposed. Regardless of which security mechanism an organization adopts, once the system variables such as policies, roles, and authorizations are defined, continuous configuration management of these systems become necessary in order to ensure that the behavior of implemented system matches with the expected system behavior. In recent years, configuration errors in access control system have emerged as one of the key causes of system failure. Traditional access control system lacks the ability to anticipate potential configuration errors. Therefore, these systems fail to gracefully react to this problem. Configuration errors often occur either in the form of false positive or false negative authorizations. It is not trivial to manually identify such misconfigurations, and moreover, existingmethods of analyzing system configuration are not efficient in detectingmisconfigurations. Therefore, there is an acute need of better ways for automatic configuration of access control systems. This dissertation aims at developing efficient and automatic methodologies and tools for access control configuration management that are based on data mining technologies. Specifically, it addresses the following three research issues. The first research problem is based on using risk estimates for configuration management. There exist a number of situations in which specific user permission assignments based on the security policy cannot be a priori decidable. These may include emergency and disaster management situations where access to critical information is expected because of the need to share, and in some cases, because of the responsibility to provide information. This dissertation has proposed novel methodologies for dynamic computation of risk in such situations where preventing an access to a resource has more deleterious effect than granting it, if the underlying risk is low. Moreover, it has developed a model that facilitates risk-based access control in both DAC and RBAC cases. Also, in case of RBAC, it has developed a method to determine situational role for a user. Computational experiments performed on both synthetic and benchmark real datasets, even in the presence of noise, confirms the viability of the proposed approaches. The second issue is to investigate the configuration management problems that arise as a result of changes within a system or due to requests from users from collaborating organizations that do not have explicit access to resources. This dissertation has proposed to exploit attribute semantics of users to (semi)automate security configuration and management, and has proposed a methodology to derive credential requirements for roles having permission to access requested object, based on local access control policies using existing access control data. The proposed approach is based on well-known data mining method known as classification. Experimental evaluation shows that the proposed method has outperformed the previously proposed approach to address this problem. Finally, the third research issue deals with automating the process of identifying and removing misconfigurations in RBAC and DAC. Towards this end, this dissertation has proposed approaches to automate the process of detection of exceptionally or erroneously granted or denied authorizations in access control data. These approaches are based on using multiple classifiers to identify anomalous assignments. An extensive experimental evaluation has been performed to demonstrate the accuracy and performance of the proposed approaches.

Security Configuration Management Third Edition

Security Configuration Management Third Edition PDF Author: Gerardus Blokdyk
Publisher: 5starcooks
ISBN: 9780655507895
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
How do you deal with Security Configuration Management changes? Is Security Configuration Management linked to key business goals and objectives? Have all basic functions of Security Configuration Management been defined? Are there any easy-to-implement alternatives to Security Configuration Management? Sometimes other solutions are available that do not require the cost implications of a full-blown project? How can skill-level changes improve Security Configuration Management? Defining, designing, creating, and implementing a process to solve a challenge or meet an objective is the most valuable role... In EVERY group, company, organization and department. Unless you are talking a one-time, single-use project, there should be a process. Whether that process is managed and implemented by humans, AI, or a combination of the two, it needs to be designed by someone with a complex enough perspective to ask the right questions. Someone capable of asking the right questions and step back and say, 'What are we really trying to accomplish here? And is there a different way to look at it?' This Self-Assessment empowers people to do just that - whether their title is entrepreneur, manager, consultant, (Vice-)President, CxO etc... - they are the people who rule the future. They are the person who asks the right questions to make Security Configuration Management investments work better. This Security Configuration Management All-Inclusive Self-Assessment enables You to be that person. All the tools you need to an in-depth Security Configuration Management Self-Assessment. Featuring 676 new and updated case-based questions, organized into seven core areas of process design, this Self-Assessment will help you identify areas in which Security Configuration Management improvements can be made. In using the questions you will be better able to: - diagnose Security Configuration Management projects, initiatives, organizations, businesses and processes using accepted diagnostic standards and practices - implement evidence-based best practice strategies aligned with overall goals - integrate recent advances in Security Configuration Management and process design strategies into practice according to best practice guidelines Using a Self-Assessment tool known as the Security Configuration Management Scorecard, you will develop a clear picture of which Security Configuration Management areas need attention. Your purchase includes access details to the Security Configuration Management self-assessment dashboard download which gives you your dynamically prioritized projects-ready tool and shows your organization exactly what to do next. You will receive the following contents with New and Updated specific criteria: - The latest quick edition of the book in PDF - The latest complete edition of the book in PDF, which criteria correspond to the criteria in... - The Self-Assessment Excel Dashboard, and... - Example pre-filled Self-Assessment Excel Dashboard to get familiar with results generation ...plus an extra, special, resource that helps you with project managing. INCLUDES LIFETIME SELF ASSESSMENT UPDATES Every self assessment comes with Lifetime Updates and Lifetime Free Updated Books. Lifetime Updates is an industry-first feature which allows you to receive verified self assessment updates, ensuring you always have the most accurate information at your fingertips.

The Shortcut Guide to Automating Network Management and Compliancee

The Shortcut Guide to Automating Network Management and Compliancee PDF Author: Realtimepublishers.com
Publisher: Realtimepublishers.com
ISBN: 1931491550
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description


Security Controls Evaluation, Testing, and Assessment Handbook

Security Controls Evaluation, Testing, and Assessment Handbook PDF Author: Leighton Johnson
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128206241
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
Security Controls Evaluation, Testing, and Assessment Handbook, Second Edition, provides a current and well-developed approach to evaluate and test IT security controls to prove they are functioning correctly. This handbook discusses the world of threats and potential breach actions surrounding all industries and systems. Sections cover how to take FISMA, NIST Guidance, and DOD actions, while also providing a detailed, hands-on guide to performing assessment events for information security professionals in US federal agencies. This handbook uses the DOD Knowledge Service and the NIST Families assessment guides as the basis for needs assessment, requirements and evaluation efforts. Provides direction on how to use SP800-53A, SP800-115, DOD Knowledge Service, and the NIST Families assessment guides to implement thorough evaluation efforts Shows readers how to implement proper evaluation, testing, assessment procedures and methodologies, with step-by-step walkthroughs of all key concepts Presents assessment techniques for each type of control, provides evidence of assessment, and includes proper reporting techniques

Software Configuration Management Patterns

Software Configuration Management Patterns PDF Author: Steve Berczuk
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 0136755364
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Stereotypes portray software engineers as a reckless lot, and stereotypes paint software configuration management (SCM) devotees as inflexible. Based on these impressions, it is no wonder that projects can be riddled with tension! The truth probably lies somewhere in between these stereotypes, and this book shows how proven SCM practices can foster a healthy team-oriented culture that produces better software. The authors show that workflow, when properly managed, can avert delays, morale problems, and cost overruns. A patterns approach (proven solutions to recurring problems) is outlined so that SCM can be easily applied and successfully leveraged in small to medium sized organizations. The patterns are presented with an emphasis on practicality. The results speak for themselves: improved processes and a motivated workforce that synergize to produce better quality software.