Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance

Every morning I get up and sign into My Yahoo and IGoogle. I have them configured to show me the days exploits and vulnerabilities. I do this to keep my clients informed. My clients consist of Network administrators, CIO's, CEO's and business owners.

Today I recommended a Cisco ASA to a client with IPS. IPS stands for intrusion prevention system. The Cisco ASA comes standard as a firewall. You can then add different modules such as VPN, Content filtering and Anti-X.

The VPN can support different users depending on the module selected. It does SSL and IPsec. There are different encryption protocols that can be utilized as well such as DES and 3DES. A VPN is a virtual private network. It allows you to login remotely form home or Starbucks securely. When you do this without a VPN, you send your data in clear text. A simple sniffer between your computer can pick up these packets and read what is in them. Encryption slows the process of reading the contents. 3DES and DES are very strong and it would take years or even longer to crack it. When you are surfing at your local Starbucks, the guy next to you can run a wireless sniffer and grab your bank account information, Yahoo Login ID, or Amazon login.

The content filtering module allows network administrators to implement security policies. Like blocking Yahoo instant messenger, Myspace, and ESPN during work hours.

Anit-X is a anit-Malware application. It defends against viruses, trojans, key-loggers, exploit code and other goodies that attackers like to use to gain info, mess up data, and just for fun.

The IPS module is nice. It attempts to stop attacks before they happen. How? It has a signature database, the firewall does deep packet inspection. This means it looks at the content of the packets and compares it against a updated databse of known attacks. It it looks suspicious it is dropped or quarantined for later inspection.