The Concept of Zero-Trust
( republished from http://security-musings.com )
The concept of Zero-Trust is an approach to network and device security that places security at the core of the network and makes it central to all network transactions.This security centric approach advocates a number of principles to design a secure and flexible network that can protect against modern malware and threats.Key to this design is the transformation from classical security overlay which simply inspects packets destined to and from the Internet, to ensuring every packet is securely delivered to its destination.TheZero Trust model provides an innovative data-centric approach to security that protects against sophisticated and targeted attacks.Regardless of the reason, your data center is expanding beyond your bricks and mortar controls. Many call this the Shrinking Perimeter. (Here, and Here, and Here,) Firewalls at the edge of your network are no longer adequate, and provide for a false sense of comfort.Empowered users are accessing the network from a variety of devices (e.g., laptops, tablets, and smart phones) and from a variety of locations.
The expectation of anytime anywhere “workspaces” for these users enable new gains in productivity, but also leads to new security challenges in differentiating access based on user, application, device-type or access type (wired, wireless, VPN).
What is "Host Protection"?
Host protection will employ centrally managed rules and profiles to ensure that applications on the host behave appropriately and that user and service accounts only have appropriate access to files and applications through whitelisting and blacklisting.
- Operate on the significant majority of our Host Operating Systems, and support all of our existing Database and Middleware
- Protect against Zero-Day malware and malicious actor attacks.
- Prevent unauthorized changes or actions, even if the perpetrator has administrative rights.
- Enable demonstrable change control on mission-critical systems.
- Centralize configuration protection across the enterprise, reducing administrative burden.
- Support a library of pre-defined rules that recognize common security events.
- Support policies across logical groups of hosts, helping to ensure the appropriate level of security and ease administrative burden.
- Run pre-defined and customized reports on policies and security events enterprise-wide across heterogeneous systems.
- Automatically trigger alerts and actions, based on pre-defined thresholds, when an event matches a rule.
- Record the event in a centralized corporate SEIM.
What is considered a Host?
- A host can be physical or virtual, and may run any of a dozen operating systems.
- A host typically will have additional software added to provide it’s specific functionality. This may include various commercial database and/or application server packages from a multitude of vendors.
- A host will generally have a specific purpose or “role” within the data center which would be defined by it’s configuration and/or applications/services running on it.
- Similar hosts may be “clustered” together to provide a single service for performance or availability reasons.
- Hosts may be grouped together by similar role
- Hosts that work together to provide a specific service may be grouped together
- Hosts that belong to a specific Business Unit may be grouped together
Protecting a Heterogeneous Environment
- Any Host protection system deployed must operate and protect the majority of Operating Systems that can be found within the environment. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft Windows Server, IBM AIX , HPUX, Solaris, Linux, VMware, Xen, Microsoft HyperV
- Any Host protection system deployed must operate and protect the majority of Database Systems that can be found within the environment. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle SQL, Sybase, IBM DB2, Ingres, PosGreSQL, MySQL,
Broad Spectrum of Application Server coverage:
- Any Host protection system deployed must operate and protect the majority of Application Servers and Frameworks that can be found within the environment. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and ISA, WebLogic, Oracle, WebSphere, Jboss, IBM Domino, Java, ASP.Net, PHP
- Any Host protection system deployed must operate and protect the majority of Web Servers that can be found within the environment. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft IIS, Apache, Tomcat, Weblogic, Oracle
Host Protection - Operating System Layer
- File Integrity Monitoring and Prevention:
- Identify changes to files in real-time, including who made the change and what changed within the file.
- Memory Integrity Monitoring and Prevention:
- Identify in real-time, any attempt to modify or corrupt memory outside of the boundaries of that owned or managed by a specific application or service.
- Identify changes to Windows Registry settings in real-time, including who made the change and what changed within the registry.
- Identify, prevent and alert on attempts to access system devices which are outside of a particular security profile.
- Identify policy violations, suspicious administrators or intruder activity in real-time.
- Respond to server incursion or compromise immediately with quickly customizable hardening policies.
- Protect against zero day threats and restrict the behavior of approved applications even after they are allowed to run with least privilege access controls.
- Harden virtual and physical servers to maximize system uptime and avoid ongoing support costs for legacy operating systems.
- Registry Integrity Monitoring and Prevention:
- Device Control:
- Configuration Monitoring:
- Targeted Prevention Policy:
- Granular Intrusion Prevention Policies:
- File, system and admin lock down:
Host Protection - Network Layer
A Host Protection Service must be able to provide a means to identify and control network traffic into and out of the host in question.
Centralized management, reporting, alerting of standard Layer 3 firewall functionality is mandatory
- Source / Destination / Port / Service for each packet must be validated
- Stateful inspection is “nice to have” but not a requirementCentralized management, reporting, alerting of Layer 4 through 7 “Application Firewall” functionality is mandatory for systems not protected by Network based WAFs. Depending on the purpose of the host, the WAF profile will differ:
- At minimum recognize and protect against OWASP top 10 application vulnerabilities
Intrusion Prevention through any of signature / whitelist / blacklist or heuristics, identify malicious or malformed traffic, and based on policy settings: prevent, log, and alert.
Host Protection - Application Layer
A Host Protection Service must be able to provide a means to identify and control appropriate access within and between applications…..
A host protection service must be able to monitor/collect/report on all resources that an application uses over a period of time to define a “baseline” for appropriate behavior or functionality. These resources include, but are not limited to:
- registry settings
- device drivers
- network connections
- service accounts
This baseline can them be used as a template for other hosts running this same application.
A profile or role can be made, based on this baseline, and a centralized policy defined to manage all hosts that use this template.
Host Protection - Database Layer
These risks include, but are not limited to:
- Unauthorized or unintended activity or misuse by authorized database users, database administrators, or network/systems managers.
- Unauthorized or unintended activity or misuse by or by unauthorized users
- Unauthorized or unintended privilege escalation
- Malware infections causing unauthorized access, leakage or disclosure of personal or proprietary data, deletion of or damage to the data or programs, interruption or denial of authorized access to the database, attacks on other systems
- Design flaws and programming bugs in databases and the associated programs and systems, creating various security vulnerabilities
Host Protection - Web Layer
- Cross Site Scripting,
- SQL Injection,
- PHP Injection,
- Path Disclosure,
- Denial of Service,
- Code Execution,
- Memory Corruption,
- Cross Site Request Forgery,
- Information Disclosure,
- Arbitrary File,
- Local File Include,
- Remote File Include,
Host Protection - Managing Profiles
A Host Protection Service must be able to centrally manage security profiles and templates, proactively alert on deviations, accept real-time updates from external threat intelligence providers, and feed a centralized SIEM or SOC.
- Nested security profiles, akin to Active Directory’s “Group Policy” management will enable quick access and visibility to host assets by Owner, Role, or Location
- A high level role would be assigned to “Operating System Platform”
- A nested role would be assigned to SPECIFIC Operating Systems (Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2007, AIX 5.3, AIX 6.0, HPUX 11…) to refine control
- A high level role would be assigned to each Database System Platform
- A nested role would be assigned to SPECIFIC Database Systems to refine control
- A nested role would be assigned to Critical Database Systems to refine control
- A nested role would be assigned to SPECIFIC Application Instances to refine control
- A nested role would be assigned to SPECIFIC Web Server types to refine control
- A nested role would be assigned to Critical Web Servers to refine control
- A high level role would be assigned to each Application Type
- A high level role would be assigned to each Web Server Platform
So? Who are the players in this field?
Symantec Critical System Protection - To date, Symantec CSP provides the widest coverage for server roles across the most Operating Systems - Both Physical and Virtual. Their System Protection Console cleanly integrates their Security and Malware product suites into a single pane of glass.TripWire Enterprise File Integrity Monitor - TripWire has been the industry leader in this space for over a decade, and is perfect for small to medium enterprises.
McAfee File Integrity Monitor - McAfee provides a suite of tools that are well integrated for protecting Windows Based Servers and Databases..
IBM Tivoli Virtual Server Protection - VMware ESX protection suite.
McAfee Total Protection for Endpoint Datasheet
McAfee Total Protection for Virtualization Solution Breif Datasheet
3rd party List of System Integrity Tools: