F5 Supporting Our Technical Community During the COVID-19 Outbreak
Our community health is always a top priority. That priority extends to all of you who support each other every day here at DevCentral. We're a global community and we know many of you are directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and we want to help. Many of us are now required to work from home, and for some of us that's hard to do. The last thing we want you to worry about is technical issues. Speaking with several of you and talking to support and our teams out in the field answering your questions, we're busy gathering content that will help us all during this trying time. Our Support During the Outbreak AskF5 K70811681: F5 response to the global impact of coronavirus - F5 Support published their policy March 4th and our ability to support you remains unaffected. We strive to meet our stringent business continuity management plans to provide you with the service you've come to expect from F5 even during events like this. Troubleshooting and Support for F5 Remote Access Solutions Finding out the limits of your configuration or license during unplanned global issues is stressful to say the least. To help you troubleshoot and get started resolving those issues we compiled the below list based on your questions. AskF5 K21883200: Emerging issues you may experience during the COVID-19 outbreak - Compiled from the incoming support calls received, this will be your best ongoing source of top issues our users are running into with the increased load for remote access functionality. If you're having BIG-IP APM performance issues, start here! AskF5 K20775035: BIG-IP APM Operations Guide - This is the a great place to start if you haven't implemented APM. Consider this your field guide. It provides topics ranging from end user clients, configuration examples, to the ever-important Chapter 10: Troubleshooting. AskF5 K05847240: Troubleshooting BIG-IP APM Networks Access issues related to lease pools - This has been a popular question where lease pools are running out because so many people are connecting in and saturating available IP space. AskF5 K7752: Licensing the BIG-IP System - If you received a new license to bump up your APM client count, here's how install your new license. F5.com: Configuring the BIG-IP APM as a SAML 2.0 Identity Provider for Common SaaS Applications - Long title I know but if you're scrambling to get some federated access up for your systems start here. From the Field With everyone working remotely the need for additional BIG-IP APM answers and solutions is evident. It may be increasing DHCP lease pools for your users, installing a new license to increase your APM client count, or using Per-App VPN App Tunnels, we're working on getting you the information you need. Determining if you're licensed for Remote Access Capabilities - Many of you may have a license where APM and client access licenes are provisioned but you're just not using them. This article will determine if you're ready to start configuring APM for your remote workers. Responding to the Coronavirus - Six Ways to Improve App Availability - It's not just remote access issues people are running into. Ensure your apps are tuned and working for any heightened traffic from the increased remote working requirements. AskF5: Customizing BIG-IP APM access policy error messages - We've heard a lot about this. If you don't have good error messaging pages your user won't know if they entered a bad password or failed the client policy check. Creating an SSL VPN Using F5 Full Webtop - For those of you who have Access Policy Manager (APM) licensed but haven't configured it yet, here's a great starting point. There's a big spike in traffic for this article so we'll make sure it's in your list of to-read content Azure Active Directory and BIG-IP APM Integration - Ease identity and access management by integrating your cloud directory structure. Another high traffic article for people needing help with integrating quickly. Configuring a Per-App VPN Using F5 App Tunnels - Taking the burden off your corporate infrastructure by allowing VPN to a single app. Not many of us need full VPN tunnels so why waste your bandwidth. AskF5 K16680: VoIP through Network Access connections - Our engineering support team asked us to include this AskF5 KB based off the increase in customer questions related to VoIP via VPN. AskF5 K12524516: APM Network Access (VPN) compression causes higher CPU usage - We're also seeing in uptick in customers calling in on this issue. If you're experiencing performance issues with BIG-IP APM, check here for a quick resolution. What to do if you're experiencing an attack? The darker side is malicious users are taking advantage of the business upheaval and trying out new attack vectors and old favorites too. If you're trying to balance out the needs of your user's remote issues, let us help you with managing the influx of bad actors. Contact our F5 Security Incident Response Team (SIRT) . They're here and ready to help. Contact Us We will continue to update this document as we gain more insights from the field. As always if you have questions please login (or sign up if you're new) and hop on over to the DevCentral Q&A where our community of F5 technical professionals are happy to assist. And if you found something useful that helped you manage your remote workers tell us! We'll be happy to spread the news. It's amazing to see the support everyone provides during these difficult times and we're always proud to work and support you.
COVID-19; Lessons from Security Incident Response
For the past few decades, threats of an 'epidemic' or 'pandemic' nature have loomed over digital assets and infrastructures. Do you remember the DDoS attack in 2002 that targeted a dozen of DNS root servers in the US and almost brought the Internet to its knees? What about the ILOVEYOU virus, which affected more than 10% of the world’s computers and caused an estimated $10 billion worth of damages? Essentially, any zero-day attack targetingthe core internet infrastructure and popular applications is potentially disastrous. The risk is even higher given the impressive volume and frequency of threats (an attack occurs every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day, according to University of Maryland). As a result, security professionals have enhanced their security incident response (SIR) mechanisms. With slight variations, SIRs follow the guidanceof NIST SP 800-61 and generallyconsist of four phases: preparation; detection and analysis; containment, eradication and recovery; and post-incident activity. As the world responds to COVID-19, what can we learn from SIR? Early detection In SIR, as with COVID-19, precursors on a subject (clues that an incident may occur in the future) are difficult to identify. It is difficultto detect a potential COVID-19 patient untilhe starts exhibitingthe symptoms. The good news is that COVID-19 is easily detectable. Indicators such as symptoms and abnormal behaviorson human subjects are well known. However, spotting an incident early is essential to mitigate it effects. In AppSec, traffic is continuously monitored and inspected 24/7 in real time, using rules-based and anomaly-based detection to detect traffic posing a threat. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) augment detection by improving accuracyrates while reducing false positives. Similarly, deploying significant efforts in early detection of COVID-19 patients. A higher capacity to monitor the population for COVID-19 symptoms (analogy of rules-based detection) can lead to early detection. Early Containment Once a threat is identified, it needs to be contained. Containmentis a mitigation strategy enacted while a permanent fix is being develop. The main goal of containment is to reduce the speed of contamination by isolating affected subjects. My coworker, Raymond Pompon, has illustrated containment strategies similarities between SIR and the COVID-19 response inContainment is Never Perfect. Despite the residual risk, as with early detection, early containment is essential at reducing the attack surface. Moreover, containment provides an environment for information gathering in point- and contextual-threat analysis. In that regards, SIR strategies includes sandboxes and honeypots systems to aid further threat analysis. Tightening Security Posture As a threat is identified and containment strategies are implemented, when facing a looming threat, it is common practice in SIR to perform risk assessment and review and enhance the security posture of non-infected systems. Even when a permanent fix is not yet available, a looming threat imposes the need for a review of the security architecture and processes to identify and mitigate possible inflections points, threat actors, and attack vectors. With COVID-19, similar process is being observed and should be encouraged because organizations and households are reviewing theirprotocols, hygiene, and safety policies. Communication Plan In SIR as with the COVID-19, managing communication is a big challenge. To quote World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, "Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself; it's fear, rumors,and stigma." Large organizations concerned for theirreputation have developedspecific security incident communication plan that reflects the nature, scope, risk, and impact of an attack. Communications are typically delivered by security leadership in the organization to stakeholdersfollowing the guidance of transparency. Special considerationare taken when a communication could be use for reverse engineering and be detrimental to the organization. However, an interesting model is the way Vulnerability Disclosure operates in computer security. An independentresearcher or ethical hacker not affiliated with an organization could discover a threat or vulnerability and report it directly to the affected organization or through a bounty program. Using such communication channel, an organization can take mitigation action. In SIR, as with COVID-19, a collaborative communication approach could hep in early detection, early containment, and tightening of the security posture.
