Ubiquity Security appliance
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@dashrender said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@coliver said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@scottalanmiller has made it clear throughout Mangolassi that he's not generally a fan of UTMs but I have seen first-hand the benefits UTMs can bring to a small business (emphasis on "small"). I agree with all of his points but since I've been able to setup and manage UTMs that have actually prevented malware infections, even while using some of those DNS services, that tends to win me over pretty quickly.
I'll also agree with @scottalanmiller that it's a cost vs benefit analysis that you'll need to do.
For what it's worth, I tend to look at the type of activities and services running at a client's business and decide whether a UTM makes sense for them or not and go from there. And for performance vs cost, I've favored Sophos UTMs. For straight-up firewall, it's UBNT all the way, every time.
How do you know the local AV/Anti-malware wouldn't have resolved that issue? That's where I sit, UTMs are interesting and can be handy but are they that much better then just having a properly secured endpoint?
Local AV is great for scanning files and processes but does nothing to block access to a website. That is the effect I'm referring to. Blocking access to malicious sites. Preventing the downloading of an infected document/file is also a win. There's definite value in stopping the file from reaching the user if it is identified as malicious. Sure it might have been identified by the desktop AV, but if it hadn't, that additional buffer is beneficial.
You mention that the webfiltering alone didn't stop the infection you saw stopped by the UTM in your example - so what portion of the UTM stopped the infection? AV scanning?
We all know that AV scanning isn't perfect - no one company is 100% effective there, so this time your UTM stopped it, and maybe next time it won't - we don't know if the local AV would have stopped it or not. For 100's of times the cost of a non UTM firewall, I really wonder if it's worth it?
There are 3 specific cases, 2 of which were domains blocked as known or suspected malicious, and 1, in my personal home, where I have a click-happy wife and son and the AV blocked a file download.
No one company is 100%, completely agree, but that argument does go both ways in support for and against the use of UTMs.
As for cost, a client with 23 staff was running an EdgeRouter and at the time, I didn't know about Strongarm and Quad9 didn't exist. One of their staff opened a Word document without thinking and enabled macros. The resulting crypto malware spread to their file server. The cost of my time to fix this was twice what would have been a properly sized UTM with 3 yrs licensing. Again, not saying a UTM would have blocked the domain or file, but 100% will not know because there wasn't one in place.
But that word document came through their email which nothing would stop because that should be coming down an encrypted pipe between the email server and the desktop client.
No, it didn't come from their email, it was a link to a cloud file share on some random domain.
Then also would not be blocked as it would have been inside an SSL tunnel. Unless it was a really incompetent crypto team.
@NashBrydges unless you are breaking your SSL yourself by letting your UTM perform a MitM attack on all your traffic.
That never happens and is a totally bad setup.
Good.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@dashrender said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@coliver said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@scottalanmiller has made it clear throughout Mangolassi that he's not generally a fan of UTMs but I have seen first-hand the benefits UTMs can bring to a small business (emphasis on "small"). I agree with all of his points but since I've been able to setup and manage UTMs that have actually prevented malware infections, even while using some of those DNS services, that tends to win me over pretty quickly.
I'll also agree with @scottalanmiller that it's a cost vs benefit analysis that you'll need to do.
For what it's worth, I tend to look at the type of activities and services running at a client's business and decide whether a UTM makes sense for them or not and go from there. And for performance vs cost, I've favored Sophos UTMs. For straight-up firewall, it's UBNT all the way, every time.
How do you know the local AV/Anti-malware wouldn't have resolved that issue? That's where I sit, UTMs are interesting and can be handy but are they that much better then just having a properly secured endpoint?
Local AV is great for scanning files and processes but does nothing to block access to a website. That is the effect I'm referring to. Blocking access to malicious sites. Preventing the downloading of an infected document/file is also a win. There's definite value in stopping the file from reaching the user if it is identified as malicious. Sure it might have been identified by the desktop AV, but if it hadn't, that additional buffer is beneficial.
You mention that the webfiltering alone didn't stop the infection you saw stopped by the UTM in your example - so what portion of the UTM stopped the infection? AV scanning?
We all know that AV scanning isn't perfect - no one company is 100% effective there, so this time your UTM stopped it, and maybe next time it won't - we don't know if the local AV would have stopped it or not. For 100's of times the cost of a non UTM firewall, I really wonder if it's worth it?
There are 3 specific cases, 2 of which were domains blocked as known or suspected malicious, and 1, in my personal home, where I have a click-happy wife and son and the AV blocked a file download.
No one company is 100%, completely agree, but that argument does go both ways in support for and against the use of UTMs.
As for cost, a client with 23 staff was running an EdgeRouter and at the time, I didn't know about Strongarm and Quad9 didn't exist. One of their staff opened a Word document without thinking and enabled macros. The resulting crypto malware spread to their file server. The cost of my time to fix this was twice what would have been a properly sized UTM with 3 yrs licensing. Again, not saying a UTM would have blocked the domain or file, but 100% will not know because there wasn't one in place.
But that word document came through their email which nothing would stop because that should be coming down an encrypted pipe between the email server and the desktop client.
No, it didn't come from their email, it was a link to a cloud file share on some random domain.
Then also would not be blocked as it would have been inside an SSL tunnel. Unless it was a really incompetent crypto team.
It was a malware laden file, and the user neglected to ensure the link was a good valid link. You're assuming it would have been served over SSL. I made no such assumption. Not sure that malware distributors always ensure their files are hosted from SSL protected shares.
They do use SSL almost exclusively because it protects their payload unless the endpoint has MitM breaking the SSL to inspect the traffic.
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Sophos also has a feature called Sandstrom which explodes documents before sending them to the user. A UTM AV may have scanned and blocked the file, it may not. Like I said, we'll never know for sure since the client didn't have the UTM in place.
Is Sandstorm an AV client on the endpoint? Then it is no different than any other endpoint AV. If it is on the router, then, it is useless unless you are doing MitM.
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@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
when the UTM manufacturer gathers malicious domain lists from a variety of sources
Again this is different than the sources that Strongarm.io uses how?
Just like different AV vendors perform differently in what they identify and block, the same is true for UTMs.
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@ccwtech said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
As for cost, a client with 23 staff was running an EdgeRouter and at the time, I didn't know about Strongarm and Quad9 didn't exist. One of their staff opened a Word document without thinking and enabled macros. The resulting crypto malware spread to their file server. The cost of my time to fix this was twice what would have been a properly sized UTM with 3 yrs licensing. Again, not saying a UTM would have blocked the domain or file, but 100% will not know because there wasn't one in place.
This is my fear as well. If something that (for a few hundred dollars extra) would prevent this event, it would be well worth it.
But you can't know this. And a few hundred dollars? I don't consider $1100 vs $97 a few hundred.
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@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
They do use SSL almost exclusively because it protects their payload unless the endpoint has MitM breaking the SSL to inspect the traffic.
Source please.
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Is Sandstorm an AV client on the endpoint? Then it is no different than any other endpoint AV. If it is on the router, then, it is useless unless you are doing MitM.
Sandstorm is not on the endpoint. Files are analyzed through a Sophos cloud service via the UTM before being allowed through to the user.
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@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
They do use SSL almost exclusively because it protects their payload unless the endpoint has MitM breaking the SSL to inspect the traffic.
Even before Let's Encrypt let them fully automate random domain names onto SSL easily, it was cheap to simply buy a cert to handle it.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Sandstorm is not on the endpoint. Files are analyzed through a Sophos cloud service via the UTM before being allowed through to the user.
So you are using MitM.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
when the UTM manufacturer gathers malicious domain lists from a variety of sources
Again this is different than the sources that Strongarm.io uses how?
Just like different AV vendors perform differently in what they identify and block, the same is true for UTMs.
Of course. But overlap has to be something like 99.99% or else you have very bad AV in one spot or the other.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
They do use SSL almost exclusively because it protects their payload unless the endpoint has MitM breaking the SSL to inspect the traffic.
Source please.
@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Is Sandstorm an AV client on the endpoint? Then it is no different than any other endpoint AV. If it is on the router, then, it is useless unless you are doing MitM.
Sandstorm is not on the endpoint. Files are analyzed through a Sophos cloud service via the UTM before being allowed through to the user.
Sure files not downloaded via TLS.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Source please.
News articles I have read over the last few years.
Random google result:
http://www.eweek.com/security/more-hackers-building-ssl-encryption-into-malware-zscaler-finds -
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@coliver said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@scottalanmiller has made it clear throughout Mangolassi that he's not generally a fan of UTMs but I have seen first-hand the benefits UTMs can bring to a small business (emphasis on "small"). I agree with all of his points but since I've been able to setup and manage UTMs that have actually prevented malware infections, even while using some of those DNS services, that tends to win me over pretty quickly.
I'll also agree with @scottalanmiller that it's a cost vs benefit analysis that you'll need to do.
For what it's worth, I tend to look at the type of activities and services running at a client's business and decide whether a UTM makes sense for them or not and go from there. And for performance vs cost, I've favored Sophos UTMs. For straight-up firewall, it's UBNT all the way, every time.
How do you know the local AV/Anti-malware wouldn't have resolved that issue? That's where I sit, UTMs are interesting and can be handy but are they that much better then just having a properly secured endpoint?
Local AV is great for scanning files and processes but does nothing to block access to a website. That is the effect I'm referring to. Blocking access to malicious sites. Preventing the downloading of an infected document/file is also a win. There's definite value in stopping the file from reaching the user if it is identified as malicious. Sure it might have been identified by the desktop AV, but if it hadn't, that additional buffer is beneficial.
AV like Sophos Endpoint can do most of the stuff that UTMs can do.
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@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Sandstorm is not on the endpoint. Files are analyzed through a Sophos cloud service via the UTM before being allowed through to the user.
So you are using MitM.
To be clear, Sandstorm will NOT work for HTTPS content unless there's a cert installed on desktop so it can inspect traffic and retain encrypted connection. Much the same as DPI SSL won't work well and gateway AVs are also the same where if no certificate is installed on desktop, you can't maintain an encrypted connection with destination server. But it does work on non SSL traffic.
As web SSL usage continues to increase, this continue to reduce the efficacy of any gateway AV, DPI SSL or services like Sandstorm for SMBs who refuse to setup the desktop cert (me included). That means more and more reliance on desktop AV/AM solutions for scanning.
While those services are, in my eyes, are being affected in their usefulness by the increased SSL usage, they do offer other services that can be beneficial to SMBs.
I see lots of people coming up with reasons why NOT to use a UTM. What I've stated all along is, evaluate the client need and figure out if a UTM is going to work well for them or not.
In my case, only a handful of the 39 clients have UTMs. ALL of those enjoy benefits afforded them by the UTM other than AV/AM scanning.
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@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
I see lots of people coming up with reasons why NOT to use a UTM. What I've stated all along is, evaluate the client need and figure out if a UTM is going to work well for them or not.
From my perspective, I was trying to find the reasons it made sense in the examples you listed and I could not. Lower cost than clean up, sure. But whether or not that has since prevented anything that could have happened is unclear at beast.
@nashbrydges said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
In my case, only a handful of the 39 clients have UTMs. ALL of those enjoy benefits afforded them by the UTM other than AV/AM scanning.
Rights, so you clearly get the point, but because you had such specific examples it was easy to poke with a stick to figure things out.
Honestly this thread has giving me new examples to use when speaking with a client on these scenarios and decisions.
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@jaredbusch said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Honestly this thread has giving me new examples to use when speaking with a client on these scenarios and decisions.
You're welcome!
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Related: My hotel windows look right into the Palo Alto Networks office building.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Related: My hotel windows look right into the Palo Alto Networks office building.
@scottalanmiller said in Ubiquity Security appliance:
Related: My hotel windows look right into the Palo Alto Networks office building.
Grab some swag!
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It’s coincidental. Not visiting them
