Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices (SSFRules) v2.1

The Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices (SSF Rules) 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.

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

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

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

Outline

• Introduction to Snort Rule Development
• Snort Rule Syntax and Usage
• Traffic Flow Through Snort Rules
• Advanced Rule Options
• OpenAppID Detection
• Tuning Snort

Lab outline

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