How can you identify vulnerabilities in your network security?

The most basic thing is to monitor traffic, and compare it with indicators of compromise. As @dave piscitello says below, DNS is a very useful way to do this, and it can be done completely passively.

Identifying network security vulnerabilities involves key steps: 1. Network Inventory: - Identify and update all devices, software, and services. 2. Frequent Vulnerability Scans: - Use scanners like Nessus or OpenVAS on network devices, servers, and apps. - Schedule regular scans. 3. Penetration Testing: - Conduct ethical hacking internally or via contractors. - Find vulnerabilities missed by scans. 4. Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDS/IPS): - Deploy IDS/IPS to monitor traffic for unauthorized access and anomalies. - Detect and prevent threats. 5. Review Security Policies: - Regularly update and review policies. - Ensure they follow best practices.

Other contributors have shared excellent recommended practices, so let me suggest that monitoring DNS traffic is an excellent way to determine whether vulnerabilities have been exploited. Look for DNS query composition or traffic patterns offer signs that suspicious or malicious activity is emanating from your networks. I wrote a pair of articles about this for Dark Reading years ago but the advice is still relevant today: search for "Monitor DNS Traffic & You Just Might Catch A RAT"

Identifying vulnerabilities in any network involves assessments through regular audits, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing. Additionally, maintaining up-to-date software, controlling access, enforcing security policies, implementing network segmentation, and providing user awareness training are essential steps to bolster security defenses. By proactively addressing vulnerabilities, organizations can mitigate risks and enhance their overall security posture.

Based on my experience, conduct thorough risk assessments to prioritize security efforts. As a result, resources are focused on protecting the most critical assets.

Ethical hackers simulate real-world attacks on your network. Aim to get behind the organization's firewall and gain unauthorized access. Test web applications, APIs, endpoints, and physical controls. Identify security weaknesses and reveal weak spots.

Pen testing simulates a cyber attack by ethical hackers. They attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in your network just like a real attacker would. This helps uncover weaknesses and allows you to fix them before they can be used in a real attack.

As an MSc. student in Cybersecurity, I can categorically say that penetration testing is arguably one of the best ways to find vulnerabilities in a network. First, it should be done ethically and with the approval of the network owner, and the scope and limitations should be clearly defined prior to the pen testing. Second, it should be carried out by a qualified pen tester to ensure the effectiveness of the test and also expose all the necessary vulnerabilities in the network before adversaries can exploit them. Overall, there should be planning, reconnaissance, scanning, ethical exploitation of weaknesses, simulation of attacker behaviour, documentation of findings, and recommendations for remediation of vulnerabilities.

Minha sugest?o é iniciar por ferramentas de varredura de vulnerabilidades e, somente após isso, partir para um exercício de pentest para que o mesmo seja mais agregador de valor e detecte coisas que você n?o conseguiu observar olhando especificamente para tecnologias utilizadas na sua infraestrutura. é importante salientar com o red team que esse exercício deve explorar n?o somente a parte técnica, mas também as regras de negócio da organiza??o, como por exemplo, através de um atendimento de call center se é possível alterar o e-mail de um cliente, ou se a atendente estaria sujeita a abrir um link enviado pelo atacante.

Penetration testing, or ethical hacking, is another critical approach that simulates real-world attacks to uncover weaknesses that automated tools might miss.

Updates often contain patches for known security vulnerablilities. As software is used and scrutinized, vulnerabilities are discovered by both developers and malicious actors. Updates address these vulns, reducing the risk of exploitation by attackers.

Many vulnerabilities arise from outdated software. Regularly patching your systems with the latest updates is crucial to plug these holes and stay protected.

Regularly install patches and updates for your software and operating systems. Updates address security vulnerabilities and enhance performance. Download updates from trusted vendor websites and avoid emall links or attachments

I don’t think that this practice addresses the issue of “identity vulnerabilities”. Sw upd is more related to a cybersecurity posture.

Maintaining a robust patch management process ensures that software and hardware are updated and patched to fix known vulnerabilities. Proper configuration management is vital to ensure all network devices and systems follow security best practices. Staying updated on the latest vulnerabilities and threats through threat intelligence feeds is also important.

Employees are often the first line of defense against cyber threats. Training them on security best practices, like identifying phishing attempts and using strong passwords, can significantly reduce the risk of successful attacks.

Educate employees on safe online practices. Teach them to recognize phishing attempts and avoid sharing sensitive data. Enable multi-factor authentication and guide them on creating strong passwords

In one of my modules last semester titled "Hacking the Human", I got to understand better through three incidents that happened in a pseudonymised organisation and how humans are indeed the weakest link in not just network security, but also in cybersecurity as a whole. Statistics has shown that about 88% of data breach incidents are prompted by humans. User awareness, education, and training will go a long way to educate employees about best practices to reduce the risk of human error that could lead to network vulnerability. Thereafter, there should be simulation exercises to test the impact of the security trainings.

Employee training is necessary to educate staff on security best practices and social engineering tactics, reducing the risk of human error. Additionally, ensuring that the network complies with relevant security standards and regulations, such as ISO 27001 or NIST, helps maintain a secure environment. Regularly performing these activities helps maintain a robust security posture and mitigate the risk of exploitation.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn"...Benjamin Franklin Employee training is a vital practice that integrates staff into the realm of information security, fostering a culture of vigilance within the organization. Information security transcends the workplace; it’s about unlocking human potential and heightening awareness of risks, not just in professional tasks but also in everyday life. By educating employees, we empower them to become proactive guardians of both corporate and personal data.

Setup a threat hunting team and start working with different network threat hypothesis. This should be a proactive activity in any organization to understand the traffic flow and detect any adversaries. Develop hypothesis based on the old and emerging threats. There should be also a good co-ordination between SOC and Incident Response Team.

Continuously monitor network traffic for anomalies. Detect unauthorized access, unusual behavior, or potential threats. Implement intrusion detection systems (IDS) and security information and event management (SIEM) tools.

Continuously monitoring your network activity allows you to detect suspicious behavior that might indicate an attack in progress. This can help you identify and respond to threats quickly. pen_spark

Regular security audits are essential to review and ensure that network configurations, policies, and procedures meet security standards. Continuous monitoring and logging are crucial for detecting unusual activities that may indicate vulnerabilities or breaches.

1. Vulnerability scanning must be performed on regular basis to identify the vulnerabilities. 2. Risk based approach should be used to identify, prioritize and to mitigate the vulnerabilities. 3. Patch management standard plays a crucial role in mitigating the identified vulnerabilities.

You can't protect your company or network against what you don't know so it's a key critical component along with others to routinely conduct vulnerability scanning to prioritize identifying and patching vulnerabilities that you consider a high risk to your environment or has a known exploited vulnerability (e.g. CISA's KEV). Threat Actor's will weaponize and exploit unpatched vulnerabilities within hours/days once made publicly available.

Vulnerability scanners are automated tools that scan your network for known weaknesses. They can be a quick and efficient way to identify a wide range of vulnerabilities, but they may not uncover everything.

As someone who has a first-hand knowledge in vulnerability assessment, I'd say that employing vulnerability scanners (Nessus, OpenVAS, etc) are indeed one of the ways to identify vulnerabilities in network devices, operating systems, and applications, due to their database of known vulnerabilities and signatures that is employed to detect potential weaknesses. The last time I employed Nessus for a systematic scan, I was able to identify weaknesses such as misconfiguration, outdated softwares, and missing patches.

Vulnerability Scanning is one way to know the vulnerability of our assets. Regularly doing vulnerability scanning is good practise to mitigate cybersecurity risk of our system.

Security topic is special: more you protect, more vulnerabilities you detect. My findings are: - all security solutions are “live”, you can’t activate it and leave, you have to constantly work on it; - Firewalls has to filter not only inbound traffic (regular situation) but also outbound to reduce time of reaction if your network was compromised; - security monitoring and vulnerability audit are “must”; - dependently on technology, authentication and/or encryption are key elements to protect you against man-in-the-middle attacks and keep the network healthy.

It was refreshing to talk about some of the things that were mentioned but there are some other examples that does not fit into any of the previous sections. For instance, there should be proper physical security measures to identify vulnerabilities in surveillance, access controls, and environmental controls, the network should be segmented, and the assets that are pertinent to the network should be properly managed.

Share! Cybersecurity is not an industry trade secret that needs to be protected. Collaboration between cybersecurity professionals in and out of the industry is so critical in today's interconnected environment and supply chains. Tell others about effective tools and procedures, let others know where you have found weaknesses, spread the word on that new zero-day. Cybersecurity is a community practice, not a silo.

The universe of known and unknown vulnerabilities/sev scores/etc may be at a point where it’s not comprehensively knowable without prohibitive spend. Basically 98% knowledge vs 100% knowledge is a very expensive 2% gap. It may simply have achieved “escape velocity”. However, you can know 100% of your connected assets, via smart DDI management and instrumentation. You can know problematic/susceptible assets that just got handed an IP address - and smarten up your vuln scanning/vuln intelligence program. You can know which clients have just started talking to known risky TLDs (RPZ allow-log rules). These are hourly touch points that a vuln mgmt. or SOC team can use to get baselines established.

Identifying network security vulnerabilities involves more than just basic measures like risk assessments and penetration testing. Ensure secure device setups through configuration management and have a solid incident response plan. Stay ahead of threats with intelligence tools and deploy honeypots for detection. Adopt a Zero Trust architecture for strict access controls and continuous verification. Use SIEM systems and EDR solutions for real-time threat response, and CSPM tools for secure cloud configurations. Regularly update and encrypt your systems, and conduct security audits to meet industry standards and continuously improve your security posture.