Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Using Ridgeback to Enhance Visibility and Harden Communications Infrastructure

Modern communications infrastructure faces ongoing, sophisticated threats from adversaries who exploit weak network visibility and insecure configurations to infiltrate systems and exfiltrate critical data. Guidance (released December 2024) from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reinforces the need for robust visibility, strict configuration management, and proactive hardening of network devices. In particular, it urges organizations to:

  • Strengthen visibility into network traffic and configuration changes,
  • Monitor accounts and device logins for anomalies,
  • Ensure patching and secure configurations,
  • Limit management exposure,
  • Segment networks effectively,
  • Deploy strong authentication and encryption standards.

Ridgeback—a platform designed to provide real-time network visibility, detect anomalies, and enforce security policies—aligns closely with these recommended measures. By deploying Ridgeback strategically across communications infrastructure, organizations can gain the insights and controls necessary to implement CISA’s guidance effectively.

1. Strengthening Visibility into Network Activity and Configurations

CISA Guidance: The guidance emphasizes comprehensive monitoring, including scrutinizing configuration changes, tracking flows at ingress and egress points, centralizing logs, and enforcing rigorous change management.

How Ridgeback Helps:
Ridgeback continuously collects and analyzes network traffic metadata, providing a clear, near real-time view of who is talking to whom on the network. By deploying Ridgeback components (service containers and Rcores) at key network segments, organizations can:

  • Monitor Configurations in Context: Use Ridgeback’s historical event data in conjunction with external configuration management and inventory tools to identify when configuration changes correlate with suspicious traffic patterns.

  • Centralized Visibility: Ridgeback’s server provides a unified dashboard displaying authorized and unauthorized communications, endpoint inventories, and suspicious events. Organizations can correlate these insights with their change management systems and SIEM tools for holistic visibility.

  • Enforceable Policies: Ridgeback’s policy engine can trigger alerts or actions based on detected anomalies. For example, if Ridgeback detects management traffic from unexpected sources, administrators can receive alerts or Ridgeback can automatically log these events for further investigation.

2. Monitoring User and Service Accounts for Anomalies

CISA Guidance: Validate and prune inactive accounts, monitor user logins internally and externally, and establish strong authentication mechanisms.

How Ridgeback Helps:
While Ridgeback does not replace identity and access management systems, it adds a critical layer of visibility:

  • Correlating Network Events with Account Activities: Ridgeback’s metadata analysis reveals which endpoints communicate internally and externally. By integrating these insights with logs from authentication services or AAA servers, organizations can detect mismatches (e.g., an account that should only manage devices from a dedicated workstation is observed initiating other management traffic).

  • Detecting Suspicious Patterns: If an account normally accesses certain network segments, Ridgeback can highlight anomalies where that same account’s device attempts lateral movement or contacts previously unused addresses, helping organizations quickly flag potentially compromised accounts.

3. Limiting Management Exposure and Secure Configuration

CISA Guidance: Do not allow device management from the internet, use an out-of-band management network, and ensure no default passwords or insecure protocols remain. Implement network segmentation and deny unnecessary traffic.

How Ridgeback Helps:
Ridgeback can enforce network segmentation policies by detecting unauthorized communications:

  • Preventing Out-of-Policy Traffic: Ridgeback can identify any traffic crossing segment boundaries that should not be connected. If a device management session originates from outside the designated out-of-band management network, Ridgeback can flag or disrupt it.

  • Zero-Tolerance Alerts for Insecure Protocols: Ridgeback’s event data can help spot when legacy or insecure management protocols (e.g., Telnet, SNMPv1) appear. The platform’s policy engine can trigger alerts or initiate automated responses such as quarantining the offending endpoint until it is reconfigured securely.

  • Dynamic Enforcement: If Ridgeback’s policies detect an endpoint trying to use default or known weak credentials (identified by suspicious repeated attempts to contact phantom endpoints or misconfigured devices), administrators can be alerted to reset or remove those credentials.

4. Comprehensive Logging and Correlating with SIEM

CISA Guidance: Implement secure, centralized logging, analyze and correlate logs from multiple sources, and apply SIEM solutions for quicker incident identification.

How Ridgeback Helps:
Ridgeback’s database and surface mapping of events complement log-based approaches:

  • Event Fusion: While CISA suggests centralized logging, Ridgeback provides structured network event metadata. Export Ridgeback’s event data into your SIEM for correlation with firewall logs, IDS/IPS alerts, and system logs. This combined approach enables advanced analytics, making anomalies more evident.

  • Pinpointing Attack Paths: If a SIEM alert indicates suspicious activity, Ridgeback’s historical network event data can help trace the lateral movement path, identify which segments were probed, and reveal previously unseen reconnaissance attempts.

5. Baselines and Detecting Abnormal Behavior

CISA Guidance: Establish baseline behavior and alert on anomalies.

How Ridgeback Helps:
Ridgeback inherently supports building baselines by continuously collecting traffic metadata over time:

  • Normal vs. Anomalous Patterns: Ridgeback’s risk and analytics features can help define what ‘normal’ traffic looks like for each endpoint or segment. Deviations—such as a device suddenly reaching out to previously unused IP ranges—can immediately raise alerts.

  • Incident Response and Forensics: If an incident is detected, Ridgeback allows administrators to pivot through historical data to understand when abnormal behavior began, which devices were involved, and how threats spread.

6. Enforcing Strong Cryptography and Protocol Selection

CISA Guidance: Use modern encryption, authenticated protocols, and secure cryptographic algorithms. Disable weak protocols and services.

How Ridgeback Helps:
While protocol changes and cryptography configurations occur at the device and network service level, Ridgeback provides critical feedback loops:

  • Detect Non-Compliance Quickly: If insecure services reappear due to misconfiguration, Ridgeback instantly detects unauthorized attempts to communicate or contact unused IPs/phantoms. This prompts swift remediation before adversaries exploit them.

  • End-to-End Monitoring: After network hardening, Ridgeback verifies that only the intended services continue communicating. If a deprecated service is accidentally re-enabled, Ridgeback’s continuous visibility ensures it cannot remain undetected.

7. Using Ridgeback to Enforce Microsegmentation and Zero Trust

CISA Guidance: Segment networks rigorously, employ defense-in-depth, and restrict lateral movement opportunities.

How Ridgeback Helps:
Ridgeback can help realize microsegmentation and zero trust principles:

  • Detailed Inventory and Surface Mapping: Ridgeback’s endpoint inventory and surface maps show exactly which endpoints communicate, enabling fine-grained segmentation policies.

  • Automated Enforcement: If policies require that certain segments never communicate, any attempt to cross these boundaries triggers a Ridgeback alert or response. Over time, policies can be refined to enforce least-privilege network access, aligning with zero trust strategies.

8. Continuous Improvement and Compliance

Ridgeback provides consistent feedback on network conditions, helping organizations align with not only CISA’s best practices but also ongoing compliance frameworks. As device configurations evolve and new patches or firmware updates are applied, Ridgeback’s continuous monitoring ensures that changes do not inadvertently create new blind spots or vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

Addressing the points in CISA’s “Enhanced Visibility and Hardening Guidance” requires a multi-faceted approach involving thorough monitoring, segmentation, secure configurations, and continuous validation of network hygiene. Ridgeback serves as a force multiplier for these efforts by providing real-time visibility into network traffic, facilitating anomaly detection, supporting segmentation, and integrating seamlessly with broader security infrastructures like SIEMs and centralized logging solutions.

By deploying Ridgeback in conjunction with rigorous security policies and hardened configurations, organizations can more effectively thwart malicious actors, maintain regulatory compliance, and operate a communications infrastructure resilient to the evolving cyber threat landscape.