Book Image

Network Protocols for Security Professionals

By : Yoram Orzach, Deepanshu Khanna
5 (1)
Book Image

Network Protocols for Security Professionals

5 (1)
By: Yoram Orzach, Deepanshu Khanna

Overview of this book

With the increased demand for computer systems and the ever-evolving internet, network security now plays an even bigger role in securing IT infrastructures against attacks. Equipped with the knowledge of how to find vulnerabilities and infiltrate organizations through their networks, you’ll be able to think like a hacker and safeguard your organization’s network and networking devices. Network Protocols for Security Professionals will show you how. This comprehensive guide gradually increases in complexity, taking you from the basics to advanced concepts. Starting with the structure of data network protocols, devices, and breaches, you’ll become familiar with attacking tools and scripts that take advantage of these breaches. Once you’ve covered the basics, you’ll learn about attacks that target networks and network devices. Your learning journey will get more exciting as you perform eavesdropping, learn data analysis, and use behavior analysis for network forensics. As you progress, you’ll develop a thorough understanding of network protocols and how to use methods and tools you learned in the previous parts to attack and protect these protocols. By the end of this network security book, you’ll be well versed in network protocol security and security countermeasures to protect network protocols.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1: Protecting the Network – Technologies, Protocols, Vulnerabilities, and Tools
7
Part 2: Network, Network Devices, and Traffic Analysis-Based Attacks
12
Part 3: Network Protocols – How to Attack and How to Protect

Data Centers and the Enterprise Network Architecture and its Components

Communication networks have long been a critical part of any organization. Protecting them against risks of all kinds, especially security risks, is critical to the operation of the organization. Understanding the structure of data networks will help you understand network vulnerabilities, where they exist, and where and how we can protect against them.

This chapter provides a preview of a data network's structure and weak points. We will also describe the hardware, software, and protocols involved in the network, as well as their potential vulnerabilities. We will talk about the traditional structure of enterprise networks and data centers, network components and their connectivity, and understand the data flows in the network. Finally, we will explain the evolving Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies and their impact on data networks, along with the networking and security considerations of cloud connectivity.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

  • Exploring networks and data flows
  • The data center, core, and user networks
  • Switching (L2) and routing (L3) topologies
  • The network perimeter
  • The data, control, and management planes
  • SDN and NFV
  • Cloud connectivity
  • Types of attacks and where they are implemented