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

What is information gathering?


Information gathering is the first step toward the actual assessment. Before targets are scanned using vulnerability scanners, testers should know more details about the assets in the scope of the testing. This will help the testing team to prioritize assets for scanning.

Importance of information gathering

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

This is a very old and famous quote by Abraham Lincoln. The same applies to the amount of time spent in gathering as much information as possible prior to performing any security assessment. Unless, and until, you know your target inside and out, you will never succeed in performing its security assessment. It's crucial to have a 360-degree view of the target and gather all possible information about it through all available sources.

Once you are confident that you have gathered enough information, then you can very effectively plan the actual assessment. Information...