Book Image

Securing Network Infrastructure

By : Sairam Jetty, Sagar Rahalkar
Book Image

Securing Network Infrastructure

By: Sairam Jetty, Sagar Rahalkar

Overview of this book

Digitization drives technology today, which is why it’s so important for organizations to design security mechanisms for their network infrastructures. Analyzing vulnerabilities is one of the best ways to secure your network infrastructure. This Learning Path begins by introducing you to the various concepts of network security assessment, workflows, and architectures. You will learn to employ open source tools to perform both active and passive network scanning and use these results to analyze and design a threat model for network security. With a firm understanding of the basics, you will then explore how to use Nessus and Nmap to scan your network for vulnerabilities and open ports and gain back door entry into a network. As you progress through the chapters, you will gain insights into how to carry out various key scanning tasks, including firewall detection, OS detection, and access management to detect vulnerabilities in your network. By the end of this Learning Path, you will be familiar with the tools you need for network scanning and techniques for vulnerability scanning and network protection. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt books: •Network Scanning Cookbook by Sairam Jetty •Network Vulnerability Assessment by Sagar Rahalkar
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Patch enumeration


In order to know what patches need to be applied to any given system, it is first important to know what version of software is currently running on that system and what its current patch level is. Patch enumeration is a process of assessing the current patch level for any given system. Once the current patch level is known, then further patch updates can be planned and applied.

Windows patch enumeration

With tons of popular and widely used products, Microsoft releases frequent patch updates to its customers. Microsoft usually releases patches on every second Tuesday of the month. The following screenshot shows the Microsoft patch update site with information on the latest patch releases:

In the absence of a centralized patch management system, one can individually download and apply Microsoft patches from the portal shown in the preceding screenshot.

It is essential to know the current state of patches on the system before we plan for an update. To make this task easier, Microsoft...