Duration

4 Days

Audience

Employees of federal, state and local governments; and businesses working with the government.

Course Overview

In this 4 day course, students are provided with a functional understanding of how to deploy, tune, and operate F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall to protect their web applications from HTTP-based attacks. The course includes lecture, hands-on labs, and discussion about different F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall tools for detecting and mitigating threats from multiple attack vectors such web scraping, Layer 7 Denial of Service, brute force, bots, code injection, and zero day exploits.

Is this the Right Course?

This course is intended for security and network administrators who will be responsible for the installation, deployment, tuning, and day-to-day maintenance of the F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall.

Learning Objectives

The course includes lecture, hands-on labs, and discussion about different F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall tools for detecting and mitigating threats from multiple attack vectors such web scraping, Layer 7 Denial of Service, brute force, bots, code injection, and zero day exploits.

Outline

Module 1: Setting Up the BIG-IP System

  • Introducing the BIG-IP System
  • Initially Setting Up the BIG-IP System
  • Archiving the BIG-IP System Configuration
  • Leveraging F5 Support Resources and Tools

Module 2: Traffic Processing with BIG-IP

  • Identifying BIG-IP Traffic Processing Objects
  • Overview of Network Packet Flow
  • Understanding Profiles
  • Overview of Local Traffic Policies
  • Visualizing the HTTP Request Flow

Module 3: Web Application Concepts

  • Overview of Web Application Request Processing
  • Web Application Firewall: Layer 7 Protection
  • F5 Advanced WAF Layer 7 Security Checks
  • Overview of Web Communication Elements
  • Overview of the HTTP Request Structure
  • Examining HTTP Responses
  • How F5 Advanced WAF Parses File Types, URLs, and Parameters
  • Using the Fiddler HTTP Proxy

Module 4: Common Web Application Vulnerabilities

  • A Taxonomy of Attacks: The Threat Landscape
  • What Elements of Application Delivery are Targeted?
  • Common Exploits Against Web Applications

Module 5: Security Policy Deployment

  • Defining Learning
  • Comparing Positive and Negative Security Models
  • The Deployment Workflow
  • Policy Type: How Will the Policy Be Applied
  • Policy Template: Determines the Level of Protection
  • Policy Templates: Automatic or Manual Policy Building
  • Assigning Policy to Virtual Server
  • Deployment Workflow: Using Advanced Settings
  • Selecting the Enforcement Mode
  • The Importance of Application Language
  • Configure Server Technologies
  • Verify Attack Signature Staging
  • Viewing Requests
  • Security Checks Offered by Rapid Deployment
  • Defining Attack Signatures
  • Using Data Guard to Check Responses

Module 6: Policy Tuning and Violations

  • Post-Deployment Traffic Processing
  • Defining Violations
  • Defining False Positives
  • How Violations are Categorized
  • Violation Rating: A Threat Scale
  • Defining Staging and Enforcement
  • Defining Enforcement Mode
  • Defining the Enforcement Readiness Period
  • Reviewing the Definition of Learning
  • Defining Learning Suggestions
  • Choosing Automatic or Manual Learning
  • Defining the Learn, Alarm and Block Settings
  • Interpreting the Enforcement Readiness Summary
  • Configuring the Blocking Response Page

Module 7: Attack Signatures & Threat Campaigns

  • Defining Attack Signatures
  • Attack Signature Basics
  • Creating User-Defined Attack Signatures
  • Defining Simple and Advanced Edit Modes
  • Defining Attack Signature Sets
  • Defining Attack Signature Pools
  • Understanding Attack Signatures and Staging
  • Updating Attack Signatures
  • Defining Threat Campaigns
  • Deploying Threat Campaigns

Module 8: Positive Security Policy Building

  • Defining and Learning Security Policy Components
  • Defining the Wildcard
  • Defining the Entity Lifecycle
  • Choosing the Learning Scheme
  • How to Learn: Never (Wildcard Only)
  • How to Learn: Always
  • How to Learn: Selective
  • Reviewing the Enforcement Readiness Period: Entities
  • Viewing Learning Suggestions and Staging Status
  • Violations Without Learning Suggestions
  • Defining the Learning Score
  • Defining Trusted and Untrusted IP Addresses
  • How to Learn: Compact

Module 9: Cookies and Other Headers

  • F5 Advanced WAF Cookies: What to Enforce
  • Defining Allowed and Enforced Cookies
  • Configuring Security Processing on HTTP headers

Module 10: Reporting and Logging

  • Overview: Big Picture Data
  • Reporting: Build Your Own View
  • Reporting: Chart based on filters
  • Brute Force and Web Scraping Statistics
  • Viewing F5 Advanced WAF Resource Reports
  • PCI Compliance: PCI-DSS 3.0
  • The Attack Expert System
  • Viewing Traffic Learning Graphs
  • Local Logging Facilities and Destinations
  • How to Enable Local Logging of Security Events
  • Viewing Logs in the Configuration Utility
  • Exporting Requests
  • Logging Profiles: Build What You Need
  • Configuring Response Logging

Module 12: Advanced Parameter Handling

  • Defining Parameter Types
  • Defining Static Parameters
  • Defining Dynamic Parameters
  • Defining Dynamic Parameter Extraction Properties
  • Defining Parameter Levels
  • Other Parameter Considerations

Module 13: Automatic Policy Building

  • Overview of Automatic Policy Building
  • Defining Templates Which Automate Learning
  • Defining Policy Loosening
  • Defining Policy Tightening
  • Defining Learning Speed: Traffic Sampling
  • Defining Track Site Changes

Lesson 14: Web Application Vulnerability Scanner Integration

  • Integrating Scanner Output
  • Importing Vulnerabilities
  • Resolving Vulnerabilities
  • Using the Generic XML Scanner XSD file

Lesson 15: Deploying Layered Policies

  • Defining a Parent Policy
  • Defining Inheritance
  • Parent Policy Deployment Use Cases

Lesson 16: Login Enforcement and Brute Force Mitigation

  • Defining Login Pages for Flow Control
  • Configuring Automatic Detection of Login Pages
  • Defining Session Tracking
  • Brute Force Protection Configuration
  • Source-Based Brute Force Mitigations
  • Defining Credentials Stuffing
  • Mitigating Credentials Stuffing

Lesson 17: Reconnaissance with Session Tracking

  • Defining Session Tracking
  • Configuring Actions Upon Violation Detection

Lesson 18: Layer 7 DoS Mitigation

  • Defining Denial of Service Attacks
  • Defining the DoS Protection Profile
  • Overview of TPS-based DoS Protection
  • Creating a DoS Logging Profile
  • Applying TPS Mitigations
  • Defining Behavioral and Stress-Based Detection

Lesson 19: Advanced Bot Protection

  • Classifying Clients with the Bot Defense Profile
  • Defining Bot Signatures
  • Defining Proactive Bot Defense
  • Defining Behavioral and Stress-Based Detection
  • Defining Behavioral DoS Mitigation

Lesson 20: Form Encryption using DataSafe

  • Targeting Elements of Application Delivery
  • Exploiting the Document Object Model
  • Protecting Applications Using DataSafe
  • The Order of Operations for URL Classification