Introduction to Cisco Secure Firewall (ICSFW)

Prerequisites:

• Before taking this course, it would be good to have some understanding of Network Security fundamentals.
• Exposure to working with any Network firewall will be an advantage.

 

Target Audience:

• Network Security Administrators
• Network Security Engineers
• Network Security Managers
• Security Sales Engineers
• Security System Engineers
• Anyone else who wants to learn about Cisco Secure Firewall

 

Course Objectives:

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Describe the operating principles of a Next-Generation Firewall
• Configure any Cisco Secure Firewall using the GUI
• Ensure that proper perimeter security is enabled using Cisco Secure Firewall
• Describe the different common use cases of Cisco Secure Firewall

 

Course Outline:

Overview of Cisco Secure Firewall (CSF)

• Basic firewall and IPS terminologies
• Understand CSF features
• Examine different platforms
• Examine licensing
• General implementation use cases

Device Configuration

• Device Registration
• Differentiate between FXOS and FTD image
• Differentiate between management options FDM and FMC
• Initial device activation and configuration
• Examining different policies
• Define objects
• Explore system configuration
• Configure Health Monitoring
• Discuss device/ platform management options
• Overview of High Availability

Cisco Secure Firewall Traffic Control

• Describe packet processing
• Explain traffic bypassing
• Discuss pre-filter policy

Network Address Translation (NAT) Configurations

• Overview of NAT
• Different NAT rule types
• Implementing and configuring NAT

Network Discovery

• Explain Network Discovery
• Configure Network Discovery

Access Control Policies

• Overview of Access Control Policies (ACP)
• Describe Access Control Policy rules and default action
• Define further inspection feature in a rule
• Overview of logging options for a rule
• Advanced Settings in an ACP
• Deploying the change in an ACP

Security Intelligence

• Overview of Security Intelligence (SI)
• Configure Security Intelligence objects
• Deploy SI

File Control and Advanced Malware Protection

• Overview of malware and file policy
• Discuss Advanced Malware Protection

Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems

• Overview of Intrusion Prevention and Snort rules
• Explain variables and variable sets
• Configure intrusion policies
• Describe firepower recommendations

Analyzing different Events

• Discuss different types of events
• Explore analysis tools
• Analyze threats

General System Administration

• Manage device updates
• Explore user account management features
• Configuring different user accounts

Basic Troubleshooting

• Identify common misconfigurations
• Basic troubleshooting commands
• Using packet trace

 

Lab Exercises

Initial Device Setup

• FTD initial boot up and n/w configuration (walkthrough/ no hands-on)
• FMC initial boot up and n/w configuration (walkthrough/ no hands-on)
• FTD onboarding to FMC

Basic Configuration and Verification

• Verify/ create different objects
• Verify/ create interface and routing configuration

Configure Security Intelligence

• Configure Security Intelligence objects
• Modify/ customize Security Intelligence

Configure Intrusion Policy

• Reuse base IPS policy (SNORT2/ SNORT3)
• Create a new IPS policy (SNORT2/ SNORT3)

Configure/ Modify the Access Control Policy

• Allow internal/ DMZ access (inbound)
• Allow Internet access (outbound)
• [Use a SNORT2/ SNORT3 Intrusion Policy configured in exercise 4]

Configure NAT Policies

• Dynamic NAT
• Static NAT

Configure/ Modify Network Discovery Policy

• Understand/ differentiate hosts, users, and applications
• Configure/ tune the network discovery policy based on your environment

Deploy Changes

• Review the changes that will apply to the NGFW
• Deploy all the configuration changes to the NGFW

Test/ Analyze the NGFW Traffic

• Connectivity
• IPS functionality
• Malware blocking capabilities

System Administration Overview

• Health Monitoring
• Device Backup and Restore
• Reporting Overview
• Scheduling Tasks
• Change Reconciliation