As a result of globalization, the COVID-19 pandemic and the migration of data to the cloud, the traditional security measures where an organization relies on a security perimeter and firewalls do not work. There is a shift to a concept whereby resources are not being trusted, and a zero-trust architecture (ZTA) based on a zero-trust principle is needed. Adapting zero trust principles to networks ensures that a single insecure Application Protocol Interface (API) does not become the weakest link comprising of Critical Data, Assets, Application and Services (DAAS). The purpose of this paper is to review the use of zero trust in the security of a network architecture instead of a traditional perimeter. Different software solutions for implementing secure access to applications and services for remote users using zero trust network access (ZTNA) is also summarized. A summary of the author s research on the qualitative study of “Insecure Application Programming Interface in Zero Trust Networks” is also discussed. The study showed that there is an increased usage of zero trust in securing networks and protecting organizations from malicious cyber-attacks. The research also indicates that APIs are insecure in zero trust environments and most organization are not aware of their presence.

LLMs face content security risks such as prompt information injection, insecure output processing, sensitive information leakage, and over-dependence, etc. By constructing a firewall for LLMs with intelligent detection strategies and introducing multi-engine detection capabilities such as rule matching, semantic computing, and AI models, we can intelligently detect and dispose of inputs and outputs of the LLMs, and realize the full-time on-line security protection of LLM applications. The system is tested on open-source LLMs, and there is a significant improvement in terms of the detection rate of insecure content.

With the increasing complexity of network attacks, traditional firewall technologies are facing challenges in effectively detecting and preventing these attacks. As a result, AI technology has emerged as a promising approach to enhance the capabilities of firewalls in detecting and mitigating network attacks. This paper aims to investigate the application of AI firewalls in network attack detection and proposes a testing method to evaluate their performance. An experiment was conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed testing method. The results demonstrate that AI firewalls exhibit higher accuracy in detecting network attacks, thereby highlighting their effectiveness. Furthermore, the testing method can be utilized to compare different AI firewalls.

A growing number of attacks and the introduction of new security standards, e.g. ISO 21434, are increasingly shifting the focus of industry and research to the cybersecurity of vehicles. Being cyber-physical systems, compromised vehicles can pose a safety risk to occupants and the environment. Updates over the air and monitoring of the vehicle fleet over its entire lifespan are therefore established in current and future vehicles. Elementary components of such a strategy are security sensors in the form of firewalls and intrusion detection systems, for example, and an operations center where monitoring and response activities are coordinated. A critical step in defending against, detecting, and remediating attacks is providing knowledge about the vehicle and fleet context. Whether a vehicle is driving on the highway or parked at home, what software version is installed, or what security incidents have occurred affect the legitimacy of data and network traffic. However, current security measures lack an understanding of how to operate in an adjusted manner in different contexts. This work is therefore dedicated to a concept to make security measures for vehicles context-aware. We present our approach, which consists of an object-oriented model of relevant context information within the vehicle and a Knowledge Graph for the fleet. With this approach, various use cases can be addressed, according to the different requirements for the use of context knowledge in the vehicle and operations center.

IBMD(Intelligent Behavior-Based Malware Detection) aims to detect and mitigate malicious activities in cloud computing environments by analyzing the behavior of cloud resources, such as virtual machines, containers, and applications.The system uses different machine learning methods like deep learning and artificial neural networks, to analyze the behavior of cloud resources and detect anomalies that may indicate malicious activity. The IBMD system can also monitor and accumulate the data from various resources, such as network traffic and system logs, to provide a comprehensive view of the behavior of cloud resources. IBMD is designed to operate in a cloud computing environment, taking advantage of the scalability and flexibility of the cloud to detect malware and respond to security incidents. The system can also be integrated with existing security tools and services, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems, to provide a comprehensive security solution for cloud computing environments.

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) have significantly impacted organizations over an extended period with their coordinated and sophisticated cyberattacks. Unlike signature-based tools such as antivirus and firewalls that can detect and block other types of malware, APTs exploit zero-day vulnerabilities to generate new variants of undetectable malware. Additionally, APT adversaries engage in complex relationships and interactions within network entities, necessitating the learning of interactions in network traffic flows, such as hosts, users, or IP addresses, for effective detection. However, traditional deep neural networks often fail to capture the inherent graph structure and overlook crucial contextual information in network traffic flows. To address these issues, this research models APTs as heterogeneous graphs, capturing the diverse features and complex interactions in network flows. Consequently, a hetero-geneous graph transformer (HGT) model is used to accurately distinguish between benign and malicious network connections. Experiment results reveal that the HGT model achieves better performance, with 100 \% accuracy and accelerated learning time, outperferming homogeneous graph neural network models.

With the rapid evolution of the Internet and the prevalence of sophisticated adversarial cyber threats, it has become apparent that an equally rapid development of new Situation Awareness techniques is needed. The vast amount of data produced everyday by Intrusion Detection Systems, Firewalls, Honeypots and other systems can quickly become insurmountable to analyze by the domain experts. To enhance the human - machine interaction, new Visual Analytics systems need to be implemented and tested, bridging the gap between the detection of possible malicious activity, identifying it and taking the necessary measures to stop its propagation. The detection of previously unknown, highly sophisticated Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) adds a higher degree of complexity to this task. In this paper, we discuss the principles inherent to Visual Analytics and propose a new technique for the detection of APT attacks through the use of anomaly and behavior-based analysis. Our ultimate goal is to define sophisticated cyber threats by their defining characteristics and combining those to construct a pattern of behavior, which can be presented in visual form to be explored and analyzed. This can be achieved through the use of our Multi-Agent System for Advanced Persistent Threat Detection (MASFAD) framework and the combination of highly-detailed and dynamic visualization techniques. This paper was originally presented at the NATO Science and Technology Organization Symposium (ICMCIS) organized by the Information Systems Technology (IST) Panel, IST-200 RSY - the ICMCIS, held in Skopje, North Macedonia, 16–17 May 2023.

Cyber Threat Intelligence has been demonstrated to be an effective element of defensive security and cyber protection with examples dating back to the founding of the Financial Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS ISAC) in 1998. Automated methods are needed today in order to stay current with the magnitude of attacks across the globe. Threat information must be actionable, current and credibly validated if they are to be ingested into computer operated defense systems. False positives degrade the value of the system. This paper outlines some of the progress made in applying artificial intelligence techniques as well as the challenges associated with utilizing machine learning to refine the flow of threat intelligence. A variety of methods have been developed to create learning models that can be integrated with firewalls, rules and heuristics. In addition more work is needed to effectively support the limited number of expert human hours available to evaluate the prioritized threat landscape flagged as malicious in a (Security Operations Center) SOC environment.

Network security isolation technology is an important means to protect the internal information security of enterprises. Generally, isolation is achieved through traditional network devices, such as firewalls and gatekeepers. However, the security rules are relatively rigid and cannot better meet the flexible and changeable business needs. Through the double sandbox structure created for each user, each user in the virtual machine is isolated from each other and security is ensured. By creating a virtual disk in a virtual machine as a user storage sandbox, and encrypting the read and write of the disk, the shortcomings of traditional network isolation methods are discussed, and the application of cloud desktop network isolation technology based on VMwarer technology in universities is expounded.

Network Security Architecture - As a result of globalization, the COVID-19 pandemic and the migration of data to the cloud, the traditional security measures where an organization relies on a security perimeter and firewalls do not work. There is a shift to a concept whereby resources are not being trusted, and a zero-trust architecture (ZTA) based on a zero-trust principle is needed. Adapting zero trust principles to networks ensures that a single insecure Application Protocol Interface (API) does not become the weakest link comprising of Critical Data, Assets, Application and Services (DAAS). The purpose of this paper is to review the use of zero trust in the security of a network architecture instead of a traditional perimeter. Different software solutions for implementing secure access to applications and services for remote users using zero trust network access (ZTNA) is also summarized. A summary of the author’s research on the qualitative study of “Insecure Application Programming Interface in Zero Trust Networks” is also discussed. The study showed that there is an increased usage of zero trust in securing networks and protecting organizations from malicious cyber-attacks. The research also indicates that APIs are insecure in zero trust environments and most organization are not aware of their presence.

Network Security Architecture - Network security isolation technology is an important means to protect the internal information security of enterprises. Generally, isolation is achieved through traditional network devices, such as firewalls and gatekeepers. However, the security rules are relatively rigid and cannot better meet the flexible and changeable business needs. Through the double sandbox structure created for each user, each user in the virtual machine is isolated from each other and security is ensured. By creating a virtual disk in a virtual machine as a user storage sandbox, and encrypting the read and write of the disk, the shortcomings of traditional network isolation methods are discussed, and the application of cloud desktop network isolation technology based on VMwarer technology in universities is expounded.

Web browsers are among the most important but also complex software solutions to access the web. It is therefore not surprising that web browsers are an attractive target for attackers. Especially in the last decade, security researchers and browser vendors have developed sandboxing mechanisms like security-relevant HTTP headers to tackle the problem of getting a more secure browser. Although the security community is aware of the importance of security-relevant HTTP headers, legacy applications and individual requests from different parties have led to possible insecure configurations of these headers. Even if specific security headers are configured correctly, conflicts in their functionalities may lead to unforeseen browser behaviors and vulnerabilities. Recently, the first work which analyzed duplicated headers and conflicts in headers was published by Calzavara et al. at USENIX Security [1]. The authors focused on inconsistent protections by using both, the HTTP header X-Frame-Options and the framing protection of the Content-Security-Policy.We extend their work by analyzing browser behaviors when parsing duplicated headers, conflicting directives, and values that do not conform to the defined ABNF metalanguage specification. We created an open-source testbed running over 19,800 test cases, at which nearly 300 test cases are executed in the set of 66 different browsers. Our work shows that browsers conform to the specification and behave securely. However, all tested browsers behave differently when it comes, for example, to parsing the Strict-Transport-Security header. Moreover, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox behave differently if the header contains a character, which is not allowed by the defined ABNF. This results in the protection mechanism being fully enforced, partially enforced, or not enforced and thus completely bypassable.

Being a part of today’s technical world, we are connected through a vast network. More we are addicted to these modernization techniques we need security. There must be reliability in a network security system so that it is capable of doing perfect monitoring of the whole network of an organization so that any unauthorized users or intruders wouldn’t be able to halt our security breaches. Firewalls are there for securing our internal network from unauthorized outsiders but still some time possibility of attacks is there as according to a survey 60% of attacks were internal to the network. So, the internal system needs the same higher level of security just like external. So, understanding the value of security measures with accuracy, efficiency, and speed we got to focus on implementing and comparing an improved intrusion detection system. A comprehensive literature review has been done and found that some feature selection techniques with standard scaling combined with Machine Learning Techniques can give better results over normal existing ML Techniques. In this survey paper with the help of the Uni-variate Feature selection method, the selection of 14 essential features out of 41 is performed which are used in comparative analysis. We implemented and compared both binary class classification and multi-class classification-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for two Supervised Machine Learning Techniques Support Vector Machine and Classification and Regression Techniques.

Port knocking provides an added layer of security on top of the existing security systems of a network. A predefined port knocking sequence is used to open the ports, which are closed by the firewall by default. The server determines the valid request if the knocking sequence is correct and opens the desired port. However, this sequence poses a security threat due to its static nature. This paper presents the port knock sequence-based communication protocol in the Software Defined network (SDN). It provides better management by separating the control plane and data plane. At the same time, it causes a communication overhead between the switches and the controller. To avoid this overhead, we are using the port knocking concept in the data plane without any involvement of the SDN controller. This study proposes three port knock sequence-based protocols (static, partial dynamic, and dynamic) in the data plane. To test the protocol in SDN environment, the P4 implementation of the underlying model is done in the BMV2 (behavioral model version 2) virtual switch. To check the security of the protocols, an informal security analysis is performed, which shows that the proposed protocols are secured to be implemented in the SDN data plane.

Nowadays, in this COVID era, work from home is quietly more preferred than work from the office. Due to this, the need for a firewall has been increased day by day. Every organization uses the firewall to secure their network and create VPN servers to allow their employees to work from home. Due to this, the security of the firewall plays a crucial role. In this paper, we have compared the two most popular open-source firewalls named pfSense and OPNSense. We have examined the security they provide by default without any other attachment. To do this, we performed four different attacks on the firewalls and compared the results. As a result, we have observed that both provide the same security still pfSense has a slight edge when an attacker tries to perform a Brute force attack over OPNSense.

The Network Security and Risk (NSR) management team in an enterprise is responsible for maintaining the network which includes switches, routers, firewalls, controllers, etc. Due to the ever-increasing threat of capitalizing on the vulnerabilities to create cyber-attacks across the globe, a major objective of the NSR team is to keep network infrastructure safe and secure. NSR team ensures this by taking proactive measures of periodic audits of network devices. Further external auditors are engaged in the audit process. Audit information is primarily stored in an internal database of the enterprise. This generic approach could result in a trust deficit during external audits. This paper proposes a method to improve the security and integrity of the audit information by using blockchain technology, which can greatly enhance the trust factor between the auditors and enterprises.

Companies store increasing amounts of data, requiring the implementation of mechanisms to protect them from malicious people. There are techniques and procedures that aim to increase the security of computer systems, such as network protection services, firewalls. They are intended to filter packets that enter and leave a network. Its settings depend on security policies, which consist of documents that describe what is allowed to travel on the network and what is prohibited. The transcription of security policies into rules, written in native firewall language, that represent them, is the main source of errors in firewall configurations. In this work, concepts related to security between networks and firewalls are presented. Related works on security policies and their translations into firewall rules are also referenced. Furthermore, the developed tool, named Fireasy, is presented, which allows the modeling of security policies through graphic elements, and the maintenance of rules written in native firewall language, also representing them in graphic elements. Finally, a controlled experiment was conducted to validate the approach, which indicated, in addition to the correct functioning of the tool, an improvement in the translation of security policies into firewall rules using the tool. In the task of understanding firewall rules, there was a homogenization of the participants' performance when they used the tool.

Firewalls are security devices that perform network traffic filtering. They are ubiquitous in the industry and are a common method used to enforce organizational security policy. Security policy is specified on a high level of abstraction, with statements such as "web browsing is allowed only on workstations inside the office network", and needs to be translated into low-level firewall rules to be enforceable. There has been a lot of work regarding optimization, analysis and platform independence of firewall rules, but an area that has seen much less success is automatic translation of high-level security policies into firewall rules. In addition to improving rules’ readability, such translation would make it easier to detect errors.This paper surveys of over twenty papers that aim to generate firewall rules according to a security policy specified on a higher level of abstraction. It also presents an overview of similar features in modern firewall systems. Most approaches define specialized domain languages that get compiled into firewall rule sets, with some of them relying on formal specification, ontology, or graphical models. The approaches’ have improved over time, but there are still many drawbacks that need to be solved before wider application.

SQL Injection has been around as a harmful and prolific threat on web applications for more than 20 years, yet it still poses a huge threat to the World Wide Web. Rapidly evolving web technology has not eradicated this threat; In 2017 51 % of web application attacks are SQL injection attacks. Most conventional practices to prevent SQL injection attacks revolves around secure web and database programming and administration techniques. Despite developer ignorance, a large number of online applications remain susceptible to SQL injection attacks. There is a need for a more effective method to detect and prevent SQL Injection attacks. In this research, we offer a unique machine learning-based strategy for identifying potential SQL injection attack (SQL injection attack) threats. Application of the proposed method in a Security Information and Event Management(SIEM) system will be discussed. SIEM can aggregate and normalize event information from multiple sources, and detect malicious events from analysis of these information. The result of this work shows that a machine learning based SQL injection attack detector which uses SIEM approach possess high accuracy in detecting malicious SQL queries.

The advancements in technology can be seen in recent years, and people have been adopting the emerging technologies. Though people rely upon these advancements, many loopholes can be seen if you take a particular field, and attackers are thirsty to steal personal data. There has been an increasing number of cyber threats and breaches happening worldwide, primarily for fun or for ransoms. Web servers and sites of the users are being compromised, and they are unaware of the vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities include OWASP's top vulnerabilities like SQL injection, Cross-site scripting, and so on. To overcome the vulnerabilities and protect the site from getting down, the proposed work includes the implementation of a Web Application Firewall focused on the Application layer of the OSI Model; the product protects the target web applications from the Common OWASP security vulnerabilities. The Application starts analyzing the incoming and outgoing requests generated from the traffic through the pre-built Application Programming Interface. It compares the request and parameter with the algorithm, which has a set of pre-built regex patterns. The outcome of the product is to detect and reject general OWASP security vulnerabilities, helping to secure the user's business and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data, respectively.

Phishing is a method of online fraud where attackers are targeted to gain access to the computer systems for monetary benefits or personal gains. In this case, the attackers pose themselves as legitimate entities to gain the users' sensitive information. Phishing has been significant concern over the past few years. The firms are recording an increase in phishing attacks primarily aimed at the firm's intellectual property and the employees' sensitive data. As a result, these attacks force firms to spend more on information security, both in technology-centric and human-centric approaches. With the advancements in cyber-security in the last ten years, many techniques evolved to detect phishing-related activities through websites and emails. This study focuses on the latest techniques used for detecting phishing attacks, including the usage of Visual selection features, Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to see the phishing attacks. New strategies for identifying phishing attacks are evolving, but limited standardized knowledge on phishing identification and mitigation is accessible from user awareness training. So, this study also focuses on the role of security-awareness movements to minimize the impact of phishing attacks. There are many approaches to train the user regarding these attacks, such as persona-centred training, anti-phishing techniques, visual discrimination training and the usage of spam filters, robust firewalls and infrastructure, dynamic technical defense mechanisms, use of third-party certified software to mitigate phishing attacks from happening. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a systematic analysis of literature to assess the state of knowledge in prominent scientific journals on the identification and prevention of phishing. Forty-three journal articles with the perspective of phishing detection and prevention through awareness training were reviewed from 2011 to 2020. This timely systematic review also focuses on the gaps identified in the selected primary studies and future research directions in this area.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become a communication medium for accessing information, data exchange and flow of information. Many organizations require Intranet or VPN, for data access, access to servers from computers and sharing different types of data among their offices and users. A secure VPN environment is essential to the organizations to protect the information and their IT infrastructure and their assets. Every organization needs to protect their computer network environment from various malicious cyber threats. This paper presents a comprehensive network security management which includes significant strategies and protective measures during the management of a VPN in an organization. The paper also presents the procedures and necessary counter measures to preserve the security of VPN environment and also discussed few Identified Security Strategies and measures in VPN. It also briefs the Network Security and their Policies Management for implementation by covering security measures in firewall, visualized security profile, role of sandbox for securing network. In addition, a few identified security controls to strengthen the organizational security which are useful in designing a secure, efficient and scalable VPN environment, are also discussed.

Network security isolation technology is an important means to protect the internal information security of enterprises. Generally, isolation is achieved through traditional network devices, such as firewalls and gatekeepers. However, the security rules are relatively rigid and cannot better meet the flexible and changeable business needs. Through the double sandbox structure created for each user, each user in the virtual machine is isolated from each other and security is ensured. By creating a virtual disk in a virtual machine as a user storage sandbox, and encrypting the read and write of the disk, the shortcomings of traditional network isolation methods are discussed, and the application of cloud desktop network isolation technology based on VMwarer technology in universities is expounded.

To train new staff to be efficient and ready for the tasks assigned is vital. They must be equipped with knowledge and skills so that they can carry out their responsibility to ensure smooth daily working activities. As transitioning to IPv6 has taken place for more than a decade, it is understood that having a dual-stack network is common in any organization or enterprise. However, many Internet users may not realize the importance of IPv6 security due to a lack of awareness and knowledge of cyber and computer security. Therefore, this paper presents an approach to educating people by introducing a security mechanisms model that can be applied in handling security challenges via network sandboxing by setting up an isolated dual stack network testbed using GNS3 to perform network security analysis. The finding shows that applying security mechanisms such as access control lists (ACLs) and host-based firewalls can help counter the attacks. This proves that knowledge and skills to handle dual-stack security are crucial. In future, more kinds of attacks should be tested and also more types of security mechanisms can be applied on a dual-stack network to provide more information and to provide network engineers insights on how they can benefit from network sandboxing to sharpen their knowledge and skills.

"Security first" is the most concerned issue of Linux administrators. Security refers to the integrity of data. The authentication security and integrity of data are higher than the privacy security of data. Firewall is used to realize the function of access control under Linux. It is divided into hardware or software firewall. No matter in which network, the firewall must work at the edge of the network. Our task is to define how the firewall works. This is the firewall's policies and rules, so that it can detect the IP and data in and out of the network. At present, there are three or four layers of firewalls on the market, which are called network layer firewalls, and seven layers of firewalls, which are actually the gateway of the agent layer. But for the seven layer firewall, no matter what your source port or target port, source address or target address is, it will check all your things. Therefore, the seven layer firewall is more secure, but it brings lower efficiency. Therefore, the usual firewall schemes on the market are a combination of the two. And because we all need to access from the port controlled by the firewall, the work efficiency of the firewall has become the most important control of how much data users can access. This paper introduces two types of firewalls iptables and TCP\_Wrappers. What are the differences between the use policies, rules and structures of the two firewalls? This is the problem to be discussed in this paper.