Create the Data Center Best Practice WildFire Analysis Profile
Protect your data center from unknown threats by sending
them to WildFire for analysis.
The other security profiles detect and block known threats. WildFire protects the data center from
unknown
threats.
Configure the firewall to forward all unknown files to WildFire for analysis using
the predefined default profile. Unknown threats can hide in many
different file types and successful attacks may not be detected
until long after they have done damage. For example, WildFire can
identify malware loaded onto a staging server before the attacker
can do damage and find vulnerability scanners and lateral movement
assistance tools before attackers achieve their goals. WildFire
could have prevented a number of large-scale enterprise breaches over
the past several years. Any security policy rule that controls traffic
that has, will have, or could have file transfer activity should
include an enabled WildFire Analysis profile.Set up WildFire appliance content updates to
download and install automatically every minute so that you always
have the most recent support. For example, support for Linux files
and SMB files were first delivered in WildFire appliance content
updates.
The reason to attach the default WildFire Analysis profile to
all security policy rules that allow traffic is because WildFire
provides the best defense against unknown threats and advanced persistent
threats (APTs). For example:
- Traffic from users to the data center—WildFire identifies unknown malware hosted in the data center such as Confluence or SharePoint.
- Intra data center traffic—WildFire identifies unknown malware spreading among the data center servers, which can prevent the exfiltration of data by discovering the malware before it can do damage.
- Traffic from the data center to the internet—Because this traffic downloads executables for software and operating system updates, it’s critical to run WildFire on all applications to identify malicious behaviors.
Set up alerts for malware through email,
SNMP, or a syslog server so that the firewall immediately notifies
you when it encounters a potential issue. The faster you isolate
a compromised host, the lower the chance that the previously unknown
malware has spread to other data center devices, and the easier
it is to remediate the issue.
If necessary, you can restrict the applications and file types
sent for analysis based on the traffic’s direction.
WildFire Action settings in the Antivirus profile may impact
traffic if the traffic generates a WildFire signature that results
in a reset or a drop action. You can exclude internal traffic such
as software distribution applications through which you deploy custom-built
programs to transition safely to best
practices, because WildFire may identify custom-built programs as
malicious and generate a signature for them. Check to see if any internal custom-built
programs trigger WildFire signatures.
