Applied Knowledge Questions
The following questions are designed to test your knowledge of network security practices, and they sometimes build on knowledge found elsewhere in the book. You might find that each question has more than one possible answer. The answers provided in Appendix B are intended to reinforce concepts that you can apply in your own networking environment.
| 1: |
GeeWiz.com just released a patented remote process watchdog tool that allows you to govern the processes running on any server in your network. Should you find an excuse to buy it? |
| 2: |
You recently joined a company that uses an IPsec remote access product to allow employees who work from home and on the road to access the campus network. Because the product uses encryption and a one-time-password (OTP) authentication scheme (see Chapter 3) to validate each user's identity at logon, the company feels confident in its design. Should it be? |
| 3: |
Every day you receive nearly a dozen requests to modify the configuration of your firewall to open and close services based on some department's or team's new online requirement. You are concerned that this process is going to lead to disaster someday soon. What should you do? |
| 4: |
Your boss returns from a security convention and advises you that it is a good security practice to run all internal web servers on port TCP 8080 rather than TCP 80 to help secure access to them. How do you respond? |
| 5: |
Why isn't requiring user authentication for remote access to a network an axiom? |
| 6: |
Should you care about the security implemented by your service provider? |
| 7: |
Consider two identical hosts connected to the network. Decide which one is better protected and why, based on the list of protections installed between the attacker and the host: Attacker > Filtering Router > Firewall > Personal Firewall > Host 1 Attacker > Firewall > Host IDS > Host 2 |
| 8: |
After reading the axioms, what do you think is the principal obstacle to deploying network security as an integral component throughout the network? |
| 9: |
In the section on the axiom "Everything is a target," you saw the various ways in which a web server could be compromised. Now run through the exercise yourself and list the potential methods an attacker could use to gain access to your internal LAN. |
| 10: |
In the section on the axiom "Everything is a weapon," you saw how a DHCP server could be used as a weapon on the network. What are the potential attacks that could be launched against your company if your Internet edge router is compromised? |
| 11: |
How can the axiom "Strive for operational simplicity" be applied when securing individual user workstations? |