Assessing network security effectiveness.
Network security Assessment addresses the broader aspects of the security functionality of a network.
This should involve exploring the network infrastructure to identify the different components present
in the environment and cataloging them.
Ideally, this should be followed by assessing the technical architecture, technological configurations
and vulnerabilities and threats that might have been identified as a part of the first step.
Following this, we should focus on the ability to exploit these identified threats to validate their
impact and risk factor, which may be based on a qualitative or quantitative approach.
This helps us in deriving accurate prioritization and business context as well as the corresponding
remediation plan.
Some key concepts that we will be covering in this course as a part of the network security will form
the fundamental and foundational capabilities that enable us to check the right boxes and derive an
appropriate value for each.
In this section, we will investigate the major domains that can help us assess the maturity of the
network.
Static Analysis.
This focuses on auditing, application code, network and server configuration and providing an architectural
review of the network.
This is exhaustive and as work and time intensive, but derives a lot of valuable insights into the
inner workings of the various components and configuration errors and vulnerabilities that might persist
in the environment as they are conducted at runtime.
Therefore, we need to break this into small, actionable steps such as design, review, configuration
review and static code analysis.
Dynamic Analysis.
Dynamic analysis focuses on the threat actors perspective Who aims to exploit the services and threat
vectors that can result in the loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability.
And this can be inclusive of network infrastructure testing the application and services testing and
dynamic code analysis.
Also remember that static analysis is more focused on preventive checking, whereas the dynamic analysis
focuses on resolving existing vulnerabilities and flaws.
Static analysis is cost efficient and takes less time compared to dynamic analysis.
This is because static analysis is generally done before deployment and is less expensive due to the
efforts that's involved.
Configuration Review.
This focuses on the auditing network components at a low level, such as firewalls, routers, switches,
storage and virtualization, infrastructure server and appliance operating system configuration and
application configurations.
You can leverage configuration reviews to perform gap analysis and document possible flaws in the configuration
and harden mitigate the identified ones.
You can also prioritize the recommended actions based on their severity and impact.
The low hanging ones should be addressed quickly.
Design review.
This concentrates on implementing security controls and evaluating their effectiveness and applicability.
For example, ISO IEC 1540812208 is an industry recognized certification that accounts for general concepts
and principles of IT security evaluation.
It captures a variety of operations.
The functional and assurance components are given in ISO is 154082 and ISO is 154083 and can be tailored
for the relevant operations network infrastructure testing.
This segregates network testing in the form of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing.
There is a wide range of tools and platforms that can be utilized for the same that will scan the network
and infrastructure for potential vulnerabilities and provide a base for manual or automated testing
of the exploited vulnerabilities or flaws.
Web Application Testing.
Web application testing involves assessing an application from various approaches to test for weaknesses
in the source code, application and business logic.
Authenticated and unauthenticated application processing and configuring and implementing laws of ASP
is a brilliant resource for digging deeper into application security practice.
So far we have explored the various major aspects that should form the basic building blocks of a good
network security architecture.
Next, we will take a look at some technical management aspects.