Introduction to System and Network Security

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Course Overview

,pOrganisations today are linking their systems across enterprise-wide networks and virtual private networks (VPNs), as well as increasing their exposure to customers, competitors, browsers and hackers on the Internet. Each connection magnifies the vulnerability to attack.

In this course, you learn how to analyse risks to your networks and the steps needed to select and deploy the appropriate countermeasures to reduce your exposure to network threats.

Audience

This course is valuable for those who require the fundamental skills to develop and implement security schemes designed to protect their organisation's information from threats.

Skills Gained

• Analyse your exposure to information assurance threats and protect your organisation's systems and data
• Reduce your susceptibility to an attack by deploying firewalls, data encryption and other countermeasures
• Manage risks emanating from inside the organisation and from the Internet
• Protect network users from hostile applications and viruses
• Identify the security risks that need to be addressed within your organisation

Course Outline

Building a Secure Organisation

Real threats that impact security

• Hackers inside and out
• Eavesdropping
• Spoofing
• Sniffing
• Trojan horses
• Viruses
• Wiretaps

A security policy: the foundation of your protection

• Defining your information assurance objectives
• Assessing your exposure

A Cryptography Primer

Securing data with symmetric encryption

• Choosing your algorithm: DES, AES, RC4 and others
• Assessing key length and key distribution

Solving key distribution issues with asymmetric encryption

• Generating keys
• Encrypting with RSA
• Working with PGP and GnuPG
• Evaluating Web of Trust and PKI

Ensuring integrity with hashes

• Hashing with MD5 and SHA
• Protecting data in transit
• Building the digital signature

Verifying User and Host Identity

Assessing traditional static password schemes

• Creating a good quality password policy to prevent password guessing and cracking
• Protecting against social engineering attacks
• Encrypting passwords vs. replay attacks

Evaluating strong authentication methods

• Challenge-response to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks
• Preventing password replay using one-time and tokenised passwords
• Employing biometrics as part of two-factor authentication

Authenticating hosts

• Shortcomings of IP addresses
• Address-spoofing issues and countermeasures
• Solutions for wireless networks

Preventing System Intrusions

Discovering system vulnerabilities

• Searching for operating system holes
• Discovering file permission issues
• Limiting access via physical security

Encrypting files for confidentiality

• Encryption with application-specific tools
• Recovering encrypted data

Hardening the operating system

• Locking down user accounts
• Securing administrator's permissions
• Protecting against viruses

Guarding Against Network Intrusions

Scanning for vulnerabilities

• Restricting access to critical services
• Preventing buffer overflows

Reducing denial-of-service (DoS) attacks

• Securing DNS
• Limiting the impact of common attacks

Deploying firewalls to control network traffic

• Analysing shortcomings of stateless packet filters
• Contrasting stateful packet filters with application proxies
• Preventing intrusions with filters

Building network firewalls

• Evaluating firewall features
• Selecting an architecture and a personal firewall

Ensuring Network Confidentiality

Threats from the LAN

• Sniffing the network
• Mitigating threats from connected hosts
• Partitioning the network to prevent data leakage
• Identifying wireless LAN vulnerabilities

Confidentiality on external connections

• Ensuring confidentiality with encryption
• Securing data-link layer with PPTP and L2TP
• Middleware information assurance with SSL and TLS
• Deploying SSH (the Secure Shell)

Protecting data with IPsec

• Authenticating remote locations
• Tunnelling traffic between sites
• Exchanging keys

Managing Your Organisation's Security

• Developing a security plan
• Responding to incidents
• Enumerating the six critical steps

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