SSFRULES - Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices

Course Overview

The Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices (SSFRules) v2.1 course shows you how to write rules for Snort, an open-source intrusion detection and prevention system. Through a combination of expert-instruction and hands-on practice, this course provides you with the knowledge and skills to develop and test custom rules, standard and advanced rules-writing techniques, how to integrate OpenAppID into rules, rules filtering, rules tuning, and more. The hands-on labs give you practice in creating and testing Snort rules.

This course will help you:

Gain an understanding of characteristics of a typical Snort rule development environment
Gain hands-on practices on creating rules for Snort
Gain knowledge in Snort rule development, Snort rule language, standard and advanced rule options

Who should attend

This course is for technical professionals to gain skills in writing rules for Snort-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). The primary audience includes:

Security administrators
Security consultants
Network administrators
System engineers
Technical support personnel using open source IDS and IPS
Channel partners and resellers

Prerequisites

To fully benefit from this course, you should have:

Basic understanding of networking and network protocols
Basic knowledge of Linux command-line utilities
Basic knowledge of text editing utilities commonly found in Linux
Basic knowledge of network security concepts
Basic knowledge of a Snort-based IDS/IPS system

Course Objectives

After taking this course, you should be able to:

Describe the Snort rule development process
Describe the Snort basic rule syntax and usage
Describe how traffic is processed by Snort
Describe several advanced rule options used by Snort
Describe OpenAppID features and functionality
Describe how to monitor the performance of Snort and how to tune rules

Course Outline:

Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices (SSFRULES)
Introduction to Snort Rule Development
Snort Rule Syntax and Usage
Traffic Flow Through Snort Rules
Advanced Rule Options
OpenAppID Detection
Tuning Snort

Lab Topology

Connecting to the Lab Environment
Introducing Snort Rule Development
Basic Rule Syntax and Usage
Advanced Rule Options
OpenAppID
Tuning Snort