Chicago Bulls Defeat Phoenix Suns 4-2 in NBA Tournament Finals
Chicago Bulls Defeat Phoenix Suns 4-2 in NBA Tournament Finals
By Meghna Thakur
Updated on 25-06-2023,MON
The NBA tournament, also known as the National Basketball Association tournament, is one of the most highly anticipated and widely followed sporting events in the world. Each year, it brings together the finest basketball talent from around the globe to compete for the coveted title. The recently concluded NBA tournament proved to be a thrilling spectacle, showcasing the brilliance and athleticism of the players involved. This report highlights the key moments, standout performances, and memorable events from this extraordinary basketball extravaganza.

Introduction
The NBA tournament, also known as the National Basketball Association tournament, is one of the most highly anticipated and widely followed sporting events in the world. Each year, it brings together the finest basketball talent from around the globe to compete for the coveted title. The recently concluded NBA tournament proved to be a thrilling spectacle, showcasing the brilliance and athleticism of the players involved. This report highlights the key moments, standout performances, and memorable events from this extraordinary basketball extravaganza.
Game 1:
The series kicked off with an intense matchup that set the tone for the Finals. The Bulls displayed their offensive prowess. The Bulls secured a hard-fought 112-107 victory to take an early series lead
Game 2:
In the second game, the Suns responded strongly, aiming to level the series.Despite the Bulls’ efforts, the Suns prevailed with a 125-120 victory, tying the series at 1-1.
Game 3:
As the series shifted to Chicago for Game 3, the Bulls regained their momentumWith a final score of 108-96, the Bulls regained the series lead, taking a 2-1 advantage.
Game 4:
In a crucial Game 4, both teams fought tooth and nail, realizing the significance of gaining an edge in the series. The Suns showcased their resilience and determination to bounce back. Despite the Suns’ efforts, the Bulls emerged victorious, securing a 116-112 win and a 3-1 series lead.

Game 5:
Facing elimination, the Suns fought desperately to keep their championship hopes alive. However, the Bulls’ collective effort and balanced scoring proved to be the deciding factor. With a 105-102 victory, the Bulls took a commanding 3-2 series lead.
Game 6:
The sixth and final game of the series was a showcase of determination and resilience from both teams. The Bulls, fueled by their desire to claim the championship, left no stone unturned. Led by their star tandem of Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic, who combined for 60 points, the Bulls produced a stellar offensive performance. The Suns fought valiantly, but fell short as the Bulls’ defense proved to be impenetrable. The final score stood at 113-108, with the Bulls emerging as the NBA Tournament champions.
Conclusion:
The Chicago Bulls’ 4-2 series victory over the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Tournament Finals marked a memorable achievement for the franchise. Throughout the series, the Bulls showcased exceptional teamwork, offensive firepower, and resilient defense. The performances of key players such as Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic were instrumental in securing the championship. The Phoenix Suns also demonstrated their tenacity and skill, making the Finals a thrilling contest. The Bulls’ triumph serves as a testament to their perseverance and dedication, solidifying their place in NBA history as worthy champions.
Everything about Bug bounty
Everything about Bug bounty
Ethical hacking might sound contradictory, but leveraging the skills of the ‘white hat hacker community has done a great job of dealing with the safety and security of the internet. The bug bounty programs have been created to tackle different issues within the code. There are several bug bounties programs that have a keen observation over identifying issues within software or applications. However, other types of programs focus on server or website vulnerabilities.
The Benefits of Open Source (and Its Primary Challenge)
Here we have listed some of the advantages and challenges of an open source below-
With the rapid development and sustainable iterations, open-source software that is abbreviated as (OSS) libraries and frameworks have been in massive demand. There is few traditional proprietary software that can match the fast-track development cycle that is currently utilizing the OSS.
In addition to this, OSS helps in decreasing the cost and timely market cycle by means of reducing the on-time requirements for custom coding. On the other note, it mines existing OSS, which can be quickly shared, modified, and copied.
These days, OSS plays a huge role in the market. According to statistics of the big organizations:
- Both LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and MEAN (MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js) development stacks are famously used,
- Android, one of the most popular Linux kernel operating systems on the market, operates on 85% of the world’s smartphones,
- Linux is also used to power three-quarters of the public cloud workload.
As per the statistics made by OpenSource, there are up to 70% of the world’s code databases are working on OpenSource. This simply means that any risk that is related to OSS usage has become challenging to tackle. In older times, open source has never been more important in the software community. Fast, responsive debugging is the crucial priority.
What do you mean by Bug Bounties & How Do They Work?
Cybercriminals are not going to take the lead. At the same time, many Linux and Open-Source developers take pride in their development and offer fixes as soon as possible. The world cannot expect miracles from a product that is offered for free and often created in the developer’s spare time.
Now, another question arises in my mind How Do Bug Bounties Work?
Bug bounty programs have taken a step into this circle.
There is a huge round of space in the ‘Big Tech’ that starts from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple. It also includes some of the smaller firms.
Bug bounties are programs that pay out to interested parties who see and fix vulnerabilities in open-source code before impacting the platforms that are already using it. Generally, a big bounty adds an additional layer of security to software that is developed with OSS.
Types of Bug Bounty Programs
The types of Bug Bounties fall into two categories – Private and Public.
Public programs allow someone to participate who is interested in the league. At the same time, those who are least interested have certain restrictions based on the participants’ existing track record or skill level. Most of the participants can report a potential exploit to them within the guidelines of bounty. Some are even offered off of the specific platform, focusing instead on the general body of OS code.
The workability of the private programs is totally different from the public ones. They only invite the programs, choosing hand-picked ethical hackers based on their skill level and existing statistics. Typically, invitees have already demonstrated great skill in testing the kind of applications the program is focusing on. Some of the invitees will evolve to a public-style bug bounty on a later basis. On the other hand, some remain private for their entire lifecycle. Many private programs are specifically focused on critical coding sections of the platform, which intend to boost security and restrict the vulnerabilities in their product offerings.
What Are the Benefits of Bug Bounties?
So, the primary benefit of bug bounties is easy to detect. Bug Bounties offer a way to financially incentivize researchers to analyze code, report vulnerabilities, and close them before the conversion of them into a big problem. Critically, they also don’t ‘break’ the primary value of the OSS code. The Bug Bounties stay free, shareable, and accessible to any party who requires the same.
What are the other aspects they can fulfill?
Public Disclosure
The incentives are facilitated to the hidden side of the business by these white-hat hackers to not reveal the fact that what they detect until the matter is fixed or closed. This simply means that cybercriminals don’t get an advanced warning of the issue until it’s too late to take action on anything with that particular information.
Pay for Results
After the follow-up of the specific chain of reporting, the bug bounty programs payout states that they don’t incentivize the wrong people to ‘milk the market’ by creating these types of problems, nor reward bad behavior. Only the ethical hacker exploits the vulnerability.
Discretion
In some private bug bounty programs, you have a choice to choose who you want to invite to ‘hack’ your product. This can be done by facilitating greater control and discretion in the market. A public program has the fastest outcomes, but it can also be overwhelmingly difficult to manage for smaller security teams.
Continual Testing
The usage of a bug bounty program allows programmers and software companies to keep a fresh and vigilant task force on the job. This depicts that the bug loopholes don’t only get identified in Beta, but they constantly come to light. This becomes helpful as updates, and new innovations to older software go live.
Vast Body of Testers
Even the largest companies cannot employ thousands of testers in-house to test the body. They can, however, access them through bug bounty programs. They give access to a huge body of willing testers who are continually working forward to better the software and close dangerous loopholes.
Diversity
Workers are working in tandem with our previous points; they also remove almost all bias factors when you run a bug bounty program. Testers come from wildly different backgrounds, skill sets, and walks of life across all geographical boundaries. This permits a phenomenal testing pool.
Scalability
Bug bounty programs can be scaled up or down to suit the company. Smaller entities can initiate gently but expand their testing if their product gains marketplace traction. You can get onboard more expertise at critical times, like during new updates or product launches, and scale it back when there’s less demand.
Expense
Regardless of the need to pay out for the successful presentation of a solution, bug bounties typically work out cheaper in the long run than in-house testing. They are cheaper than the loss of reputation, and customers trust that. They exist when a critical vulnerability remains alive.
Skilled Labor
It’s worth mentioning that no one will be paying for unskilled labor. Private bug bounty programs get to hand-pick who they’re working with. Even public programs are working with skilled testers who have to demonstrate that they can close, not just identify loopholes.
Control
This also places a great deal of control in the hands of the company running a bug bounty. You set the rules, and the ethical hackers engaging with your product come to you with the required solutions. You can even make a choice between how long the program should run, what sort of bugs are being tested for, what you pay out for, and many more.
One single bug bounty program- the Internet Bug Bounty- has managed a lot to uncover over a thousand defects in existing open-source programs, paying out a combined total of $750,000 to the hackers that came forward. On average, each bounty netted $500-$750, although some high-end bounties have been capped at $25,000 for particularly lucrative loopholes. They’ve even used a ‘bragging rights’ billboard as an extra incentive.
Top Benefits of Cloud Infrastructure Security
Top Benefits of Cloud Infrastructure Security
Adoption of new technologies tends to increase qualitative growth, and along with this, they hold high chances of quantitative data breaches. After absorbing the techniques of cloud technology, it becomes relevant to visualize the security of cloud infrastructure as one of the crucial responsibilities. There are various organizations around the globe that are still not aware of the security of their data available in the cloud environment.
These data breaches are evidence that storage service providers require consistent management of security. Unfortunately, when we talk about cloud infrastructure security, many enterprises have the wrong assumption that their data is well-guarded and far away from the radar of cybercriminals. Cyber criminals have their command at scraping up exposed, vulnerable data by using unethical ways to look for unsecured databases.
The term cloud computing infrastructure security refers to the entire infrastructure. It is a comprehensive set of policies, applications, and technologies. It controls and protects virtualized IPs, services, applications, and data.
There are companies that are taking the initiative to migrate their extensive data and infrastructure to the cloud. For those, the major important thing to keep under consideration is cloud security testing. Cloud security offers multiple levels of control in order to facilitate continuity and protection in a network infrastructure. As a result, it is an important element in creating a resilient environment that works for companies worldwide.
Enjoy the benefits of cloud infrastructure security by partnering with leading technology-based private cloud computing security service providers that help in keeping the smooth operation of the company’s security.
5 Major Benefits of Cloud Infrastructure Security Solutions:
Data Security
In today’s time, cloud computing servers are becoming susceptible to data breaches. Cloud infrastructure security solutions help in ensuring that data like sensitive information and transactions are protected. The action of tampering by a third party is prevented by the data being transmitted.
DDoS Protection
Distributed denial of service, which is abbreviated as DDoS attacks, is rising on a continuous basis and deploys to flood the computer system with requests. With the effect of this, the loading of the website slows down to a level where it starts crashing when the number of requests exceeds the limit of handling. Cloud computing security provides solutions focused on prohibiting bulk traffic that targets the company’s cloud servers.
Constant Support
The best practices of cloud infrastructure security solutions are that it offers consistent support and high availability to support the company’s assets. In addition to this, the users tend to avail all the possible benefits of 27/7 live monitoring throughout the year. This live monitoring and constant support secure the data effortlessly.
Threat Detection
Advanced threat detection strategies are offered in infrastructure security in the cloud. The strategy involves endpoint scanning techniques for threats on all devices. Endpoint scanning enhances the security of devices that are accessing your network.
Supervision of Compliance
The entire infrastructure requires to be working under complaint regulations so that it can facilitate endless protection of the data. Complaint-secured cloud computing infrastructure manages and maintains the safety features of cloud storage.
They define how beneficial and vital is cloud infrastructure security for an organization. Unfortunately, there are many high-profile cases that have been witnessed in past years related to data breaches.
In order to fill the gap between the loopholes and support the strengthening of IT infrastructure security, it is crucial to keep the security of cloud storage services a high priority. Engage with top-class cloud computing security tools to get better results and have the data secured.
API Security Checklist
API Security Checklist: The Top Requirements
Because of the several disparate solutions, developing modern applications can be highly complex that communicate with each other. To make a successful outcome, the developers need to be deliberate about how they include business logic in their code. Setting up the accurate logic is a bit time-consuming process, and developers are forced to tack on security as an afterthought. Inevitably, this approach to security gives attackers a chance to easily compromise critical workloads. As per a recent report, it was found that a shocking two-thirds of organizations lack a basic API security strategy.
Why is there a massive requirement for API security APIs?
According to the traditional era, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have been utilized in order to help one server communicate with another server. However, with the advent of microservices, APIs have become essential for making communication between servers.
The complexity of the applications grows with the increase in the value to the end user. As an effect of this, the developers are pressured to increase productivity. There are certain startups, including Tabnine and Raycast, that have held impressive funding rounds in the recent note. This process indicates how relevant the productivity of the developers has become. With this pressure on performance, developers don’t have the time to test each API connection for vulnerabilities or perform periodical penetration testing to ensure that new attack surfaces are not being launched.
The API Security Checklist
Assuring the security of anything is easier when you have a good plan in place. Developers can perform checks on APIs at their level without compromising on due dates. An exhaustive checklist would cover all bases and help teams streamline their API security strategy.
- OWASP threats
OWASP API Security is one of the most important checks to cover. Both developers and reviewers should perform reviews to ensure that these threats are covered in the API security strategy. The top API security threats are well-documented, and the team of developers can get plenty of material over the online platform to understand them. They can also find some ways to protect their APIs from these common threats.
- Authorization and authentication
Authorization and authentication checks are critical and should be performed rigorously to ensure the security of the APIs. Teams can take charge of the user input to see how APIs react and confirm no sensitive information is exposed on the client side. They should also ensure any data filtration is done on the server side and not on the client side. An authorized user might not visualize the additional, sensitive data, but attackers can easily access this data. Rate limits and throttling are a few of the effective ways to prevent D-DoS. In case the user has no restrictions imposed on the number of times an API is called, attackers could deliberately ping that API until the server crashes.
- Security configuration
APIs can also be compromised if the security configuration is wrong. Security misconfigurations can also take place if developers aren’t well-versed with API security processes or due to a compromised API update. In any of the mentioned ways, these security flaws permit the attackers to access critical workloads. Always remember to keep a check on security configurations, as they are a vital part of any API security checklist.
- Hidden form fields
Attackers hold power to manipulate APIs via hidden form fields. Security and development teams should utilize the inspect element option in web browsers to check for hidden form fields. If any hidden form fields are found, teams should take charge of random inputs to understand the API response and document the observations.
- SQL/NoSQL injections
Injections are tough to tackle. Attackers can either utilize the SQL or NoSQL injections to an API to access data on the server. With the help of command injections, attackers can take the initiative to manipulate the servers directly. To tackle the situation and stop the attackers from doing so, teams can append OS commands in the API inputs and check the servers’ responses.
- Data encryption
Data encryption is yet an important crucial step taken by the developers. This ensures the security of their APIs. Teams should show relevant data only to authorized users upon decryption on the client side. Does this check that the data is accessible to malicious actors? Developers should in-build an encryption strategy that is up to the mark of the industry standards. Developers should also effectively abstract any data, including passwords or keys so that unauthorized personnel do not have access to sensitive data.
- Clear ownership
Tasks like encryption and elimination of sensitive data are the responsibility of the developer. At the same time, Ops teams must focus on updating APIs, eliminating obsolete APIs, and security configuration checks. Testing teams can own tasks, including input fuzzing, parameter tampering checks, and authentication checks. It reflects the workability of the teams and how the responsibility can be shared across different members without creating silos.
Cloud Security: Its Benefits and main Pillars
Cloud Security: Its Benefits and main Pillars
Across the enterprise, Cloud Computing is one of the best ways to achieve digital agility. Migrating your data, infrastructure, and applications from on-premise hardware to the cloud supports the productivity of your hybrid workforce. The data over the cloud is always available, and collaborative communication is a huge benefit of cloud computing. The challenge of securing a perimeter is experienced in delivering secure cloud services.
Over the globe, various companies have rapidly implemented cloud solutions within the last two years to accommodate remote working. But the hasty migration may have increased the attack surfaces and led to wasteful technology acquisitions, insecure data transfers, and compliance issues. Cloud solutions must be addressed as a part of your overall security posture to maximize the benefits of data reliability, availability, and security.
What do you mean by Cloud Security?
The role of Cloud Security is to protect the cloud-based services, applications, and data through governance policies, technology, threat management, defined processes, and accessibility controls.
Protecting your business-critical data and applications can be a shared responsibility and a shared cost of the cloud services when you partner with a trusted Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). In an OpEx model, when cloud computing is delivered securely, it not only decreases the upfront costs but with the utilization of this, the user will also be able to scale as per the demand. While cloud strategies seem standard for future-focused business organizations, Gartner sees that “execution remains impeded by a lack of mandatory skills and tools to ensure secure cloud computing deployments.”
From the CEO to software developers, everyone in the organization needs to take security as a primary approach to cloud services. Engaging an MSP experienced in cloud deployments will help build and implement your cloud strategy to ensure that cloud deployment and execution will be managed appropriately.
How to Manage Security in the Cloud?
To protect the data from unfair means, cloud service providers use a combination of methods.
- Firewalls are a mainstay of cloud architecture. Firewalls protect the perimeter of your network security and end-users as well. Firewalls also safeguard traffic between different applications stored in the cloud.
- Access controls protect data by permitting you to set access lists for different assets. For example, you might allow specific employees’ application access while restricting others. By maintaining strict access control, you can safeguard critical documents from malicious insiders or hackers from stolen credentials.
- Cloud service providers always take the initiative to protect data that’s in transit. Data Security methods include virtual private networks, encryption, or masking. Virtual private networks (VPNs) allow remote employees to connect to corporate networks. VPNs accommodate tablets and smartphones for remote access.
- Data masking encrypts identifiable information, including names. Data masking maintains data integrity by keeping important information private. Using data masking, a medical company can share data without violating HIPAA laws.
- Threat intelligence identifies security threats and ranks them as per their importance. This feature helps you protect mission-critical assets from threats.
- Disaster recovery is the essence of security since it helps you recover data that are lost or stolen.
- The cloud services provider may also need to comply with data storage regulations. Some countries require data that can be stored within the boundaries of their country. If your country can fulfill this demand, you need to verify that a cloud provider has data centers in your country.
Benefits of Cloud Computing Security
Let’s take a look at the several benefits of a cloud security solution that are blended with the performance of a content delivery network.
Cloud DDoS Protection
Distributed denial of service attacks is in the increasing stage, particularly for retail and gaming websites. In 2014, CDNetworks saw a 29 % hike in DDoS attack frequency on client websites. Amplification attacks, a type of DDoS attack that utilizes vulnerable systems to send huge amounts of traffic to the target website or web application servers, this has increased sharply from only one occurrence in 2013 to 64 % in 2014.
A DDoS attack is designed to overwhelm website servers so they can no longer respond to legitimate user requests. Once a DDoS attack becomes successful, it renders a website for hours or even days. This can result in a loss of revenue, customer trust, and brand authority.
CDNetworks’ cloud security is a suite of services that monitor, identify and analyze DDoS attacks. A four-step process begins with identifying incoming DDoS attacks, alerting website managers of them, effectively absorbing DDoS traffic and dispersing it across global PoPs (points of presence), and facilitating post-attack analysis.
High Availability
Web assets, whether they’re a suite of applications or a business website, are always on. A security solution that provides constant real-time support, including live monitoring, is becoming a business necessity. CDNs enhance the delivery of website content as well as application functionality on a global scale.
CDNs have built-in flexibility, allowing for a defense against various DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks can flood servers with anywhere between 1Gbps to 20Gbps of traffic, putting most origin and backup servers in a traditional network infrastructure out of commission.
Considering this, enterprises are turning toward managing hosting providers and content delivery networks with DDoS absorption capabilities to ensure continuity of service for their audience. CDNs utilize a global network of PoPs to balance incoming traffic, whether a legitimate spike or an unusual amount of traffic that needs to be diverted, minimizing downtime and delivering more intuitive security controls.
Data Security
Several major data breaches at high-profile companies are nicknamed “The Year of the Data Breach,” IT professionals and executives can do everything they can to prevent a data breach at their own company. As a result, investments in access control, intrusion prevention, identity management, and virus and malware protection are on the rise.
These types of investments are coupled with cybersecurity protocols that protect communications between users and company servers. CDNs have added security protocols within their network to protect sensitive information and transactions. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is the successor to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which safeguards information to prevent a third party from eavesdropping or tampering with a message. E-commerce sites should look for a CDN with PCI compliance and other digital rights management layers.
Regulatory Compliance
Some industries that belong to financial institutions and e-commerce industries can have more industry and governmental regulations than others. A robust CDN can facilitate an enhanced infrastructure that supports regulatory compliance and use to protect consumers’ personal and financial data.
Here we have mentioned some of the Pillars of Robust Cloud Security.
Some of the cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offer many cloud-native security features and services. All of these services are supplementary third-party solutions that are essential to achieve enterprise-grade cloud workload protection from breaches, data leaks, and targeted attacks in the cloud environment. Only an integrated cloud-native/third-party security stack provides the centralized visibility and policy-based granular control that are mandatory to deliver the following industry best practices:
- Granular, policy-based IAM and authentication controls across complex infrastructures
- Rather than working with individuals at the IAM level, work with groups and roles to make it easier to update IAM definitions as business requirements change. Grant only the minimal access privileges to assets and APIs essential for a group or role to carry out its tasks. Do not neglect good IAM hygiene, enforcing strong password policies, permission time-outs, and many more.
- Zero-trust cloud network security controls across logically isolated networks and micro-segments
- Deploy business-critical resources and apps in logically isolated sections of the provider’s cloud network, like Virtual Private Clouds (AWS and Google) or vNET (Azure). Use subnets to micro-segment workloads from each other, with granular security policies at subnet gateways. Use dedicated WAN links in hybrid architectures, and use static user-defined routing configurations to customize access to virtual devices, virtual networks and their gateways, and public IP addresses.
- Enforcement of virtual server protection policies and processes such as change management and software updates:
- Cloud security vendors provide robust Cloud Security Posture Management, consistently applying governance and compliance rules and templates when provisioning virtual servers, auditing for configuration deviations, and remediating automatically where possible.
- Safeguarding all applications (and especially cloud-native distributed apps) with a next-generation web application firewall
- This will granularly inspect and control traffic to and from web application servers, automatically updates WAF rules in response to traffic behavior changes, and is deployed closer to microservices that are running workloads.
- Enhanced data protection
- Enhanced data protection with encryption at all transport layers, secure file shares and communications, continuous compliance risk management, and good data storage resource hygiene, such as detecting misconfigured buckets and terminating orphan resources.
- Threat intelligence that detects and remediates known and unknown threats in real-time
- Third-party cloud security vendors add context to the large and diverse streams of cloud-native logs by cross-referencing aggregated log data with internal data such as asset and configuration management systems, vulnerability scanners, etc., and external data such as public threat intelligence feeds, geolocation databases, etc. They also provide tools that help visualize and query the threat landscape and promote quicker incident response times. AI-based anomaly detection algorithms are applied to catch unknown threats, which then undergo forensics analysis to determine their risk profile. Real-time alerts on intrusions and policy violations shorten times to remediation, sometimes even triggering auto-remediation workflows.
Secure ways to configure a Firewall
Access to the internet is no longer an option. Accessibility has become a requirement for everyone. Internet connection has its own set of benefits for an organization; the availability of the internet also allows the outside world to communicate with the organization’s internal network.
Visiting another website requires a connection to a specialized computer which is technically known as a web server. This web server can be easily hacked by any of the hackers by the medium of any other computer. Attackers have the potential to infect the host computer with malware and start D-DoS attacks when they connect to a foreign machine.
What is the requirement of the firewall?
What is Firewall?
Have you ever heard of the name firewalls? If no! Then let us learn something about firewalls. A firewall is a type of network security device that has the role of monitoring and controlling incoming and outgoing traffic. Network security is either done on hardware or software. It permits the factors of rejecting or blocking specific traffic based on a predetermined set of rules. It helps in protecting the network from both external and internal threats.
What is the workability of the firewall?
At the time of encountering unauthorized traffic, a firewall scans and tries to match the traffic with its defined set of rules. There are sets of rules that are further matched with the network; appropriate actions are taken for that specified network. If the incoming traffic is seen as a security risk, the firewall prevents it from entering the internal network.
The vulnerability of networks connected to the internet necessitates the use of firewalls. A third party can infect an unprotected network. The hacked website or server can actively infect or harm the network with the usage of malware, and all this can be done the gain control of the network. D-DoS (Distributed-Denial-of-Service) attacks, which can force a website or server to crash, can render your network vulnerable in case of the unavailability of the firewalls.
The Importance of proper Firewall Configuration
A firewall is an important part of network security and must be configured correctly. They help in protecting the company against cyberattacks and data breaches. Hackers can obtain unauthorized access to a protected internal network and can even steal critical information in the absence of the firewall configuration.
A properly configured firewall can protect the server from harmful cyberattacks to the fullest extent possible.
Ways to Secure Configure a Firewall
A firewall setting is critical for ensuring that only authorized administrators have access to a network.
The following actions are required:
- Secure the Firewall to authorized personnel- Secure your firewall and hand over the credentials to the authorized personnel that can access the internal network.
- Update your firewall to the latest firmware.
- A firewall should never be put into production without the proper configurations.
- Delete, disable, or rename the default accounts and make the utilization of unique and complex passwords.
- Never use shared accounts managed by multiple administrators.
- Disable Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
- Create Firewall Zones and Establish IP Addresses
Make the decision regarding which assets need to be safeguarded and map out the network so that these assets can be grouped together and assigned to different networks or zones based on their functions and sensitivity levels. The greater the number of zones you construct, the more secure the network will be generated.
Management of more zones consumes more effort, this is the only reason why assigning zones to firewall interfaces, and subinterfaces requires establishing associated IP addresses.
- Configuring Access Control Lists (ACLs)
Access Control Lists are used by organizations in order to determine which traffic is permitted to pass or banned (ACLs). ACLs are the types of rules that a firewall uses to determine. They have a track of what actions should be taken in response to unauthorized traffic attempting to access the network.
The actual source and destination port numbers and IP addresses should be specified in ACLs. Each ACL should have a “Deny All” rule to filter traffic. The interface and subinterface should be inbound and outgoing to guarantee that only allowed traffic reaches a zone.
- Configuring Firewall Services and Logging
Among the various services like an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server, all can be built within some firewalls. It’s critical to turn off any firewall-supported extra services that aren’t in use.
- Testing the Firewall Configuration
It becomes relevant to do regular testing of your firewall settings once you’re confident. Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is crucial for ensuring that the correct traffic is permitted to pass and that the firewall is working as intended. In case the firewall configuration fails during the testing phase, it creates a backup.