The Threat Prevention Policy

In This Section: Workflow for Creating a Threat Prevention Policy Threat Prevention Policy Layers Threat Prevention Rule Base

Workflow for Creating a Threat Prevention Policy

Threat Prevention lets you customize profiles that meet the needs of your organization.

Ideally, you might want to set all protections to Prevent in order to protect against all potential threats. However, to let your gateway processes focus on handling the most important traffic and report only the most concerning threats, you need to determine the most effective way to apply the Threat Prevention settings.

When you define a new Threat Prevention profile, you can create a Threat Prevention Policy which activates only the protections that you need and prevents only the attacks that most threaten your network.

This is the high-level workflow to create and deploy a Threat Prevention policy:

1. Enable the Threat Prevention Software Blades on the Security Gateways.
2. Update the IPS database and Malware database with the latest protections.
3. Optional: Create Policy Packages.
4. Optional: For each Policy Package, create Threat Prevention Policy Layers.

   Note - For each Policy Layer, configure a Threat Prevention Rule Base with the Threat Prevention profile as the Action of the rule.

5. Install the Threat Prevention policy.

Threat Prevention Policy Layers

You can create a Threat Prevention Rule Base with multiple Ordered Layers. Ordered Layers help you organize your Rule Base to best suit your organizational needs. You can divide the Ordered Layers by services or networks. Each Ordered Layer calculates its action separately from the other Layers. In case of one Layer in the policy package, the rule enforced is the first rule matched. In case of multiple Layers:

• If a connection matches a rule in only one Layer, then the action enforced is the action in that rule.
• When a connection matches rules in more than one Layer, the gateway enforces the strictest action and settings.

Important - When the Threat Prevention blades run in MTA mode, the gateway enforces the automatic MTA rule, which is created when MTA is enabled on the gateway.

Action Enforcement in Multiple-Layered Security Policies

These examples show which action the gateway enforces when a connection matches rules in more than one Ordered Layers.

Example 1

	Data Center Layer	Corporate LAN Layer
Rule matched	Rule 3	Rule 1
Profile action	Prevent	Detect

Enforced action: Prevent

Example 2

	Data Center Layer	Corporate LAN Layer
Rule matched	Rule 3	Rule 1
Profile action	Prevent	Detect
Exception for protection X	Inactive	-

Enforced action for protection X: Detect

Example 3

	Data Center Layer	Corporate LAN Layer
Rule matched	Rule 3	Rule 1
Profile action	Prevent	Detect
Override for protection X	Detect	-
Exception for protection X	Inactive	-

Exception is prior to override and profile action. Therefore, the action for the Data Center Layer is Inactive.

The action for the Corporate LAN Layer is Detect.

Enforced action for protection X: Detect.

Example 4

	Data Center Layer	Corporate LAN Layer
Rule matched	Rule 3	Rule 1
Profile action	Deep Scan all files	Process specific file type families: Inspect doc files and Drop rtf files.

Enforced action: Deep Scan doc files and Drop rtf files.

Example 5

MIME nesting level and Maximum archive scanning time

The strictest action is:

Block combined with the minimum nesting level/scanning time, or

Allow combined with the maximum nesting level/scanning time, or

If both Block and Allow are matched, the enforced action is Block.

Example 6

UserCheck

	HR Layer	Finance Layer	Data Center Layer 3
Rule matched	Rule 3	Rule 1	Rule 4
Profile action	Detect	Prevent	Prevent
Configured page	Page A	Page B	Page C

The first Layer with the strictest action is enforced.

Enforced Action: Prevent with UserCheck Page B.

Creating a New Ordered Layer

This section explains how to create a new Threat Prevention Ordered Layer. You can configure reuse of Threat Prevention Ordered Layers in different Policy Packages, and set different administrator permissions per Threat Prevention Layer.

To create a new Threat Prevention Layer:

1. In SmartConsole, go to Threat Prevention.
2. Right-click Policy and select Edit Policy.
3. In the General tab, go to Threat Prevention and click the + sign.
4. Select New Layer.

   The New Threat Prevention Layer window opens

5. Enter the Layer Name.
6. Optional: In the General tab, in the Sharing area, you can configure reuse of the layer in different policy packages. Select Multiple policies and rules can use this layer.

   Note - you cannot share the first Threat Prevention layer because it contains the MTA and ICAP rules. If this layer is shared with other policy packages then there can be conflicting MTA and ICAP rules in the same policy package.

7. In the Permissions tab, select the permission profiles that can edit this layer.

   Note - There is no need to add permission profiles that are configured to edit all layers.

8. Click OK.

Threat Prevention Layers in Pre-R80 Gateways

In pre-R80 versions, the IPS Software Blade was not part of the Threat Prevention Policy, and was managed separately. In R80.xx versions, the IPS Software Blade is integrated into the Threat Prevention Policy.

When you upgrade SmartConsole to R80.xx from earlier versions, with some Security Gateways upgraded to R80.xx, and other Security Gateways remaining in previous versions:

• For pre-R80 gateways with IPS and Threat Prevention Software Blades enabled, the policy is split into two parallel layers: IPS and Threat Prevention.

  To see which Security Gateway enforces which IPS profile, look at the Install On column in the IPS Layer.

• R80.xx gateways are managed separately, based on the R80 or higher Ordered Layers.

Best Practice - For better performance, we recommend that you use the Optimized profile when you upgrade to R80 or higher from earlier versions.

Threat Prevention Rule Base

Each Threat Prevention Layer contains a Rule Base. The Rule Base determines how the system inspects connections for malware.

The Threat Prevention rules use the Malware database and network objects. Security Gateways that have Identity Awareness enabled can also use Access Role objects as the Protected Scope in a rule. The Access Role objects let you easily make rules for individuals or different groups of users.

There are no implied rules in this Rule Base, traffic is allowed or not allowed based on how you configure the Rule Base. For example, A rule that is set to the Prevent action, blocks activity and communication for that malware.