Apply Security Policies to the VM-Series Firewall on NSX-T (East-West)

Table of Contents

Direct Traffic to the VM-Series Firewall

Use vMotion to Move the VM-Series Firewall Between Hosts

Apply Security Policies to the VM-Series Firewall on NSX-T (East-West)

This section describes security policies and its applications.

Where Can I Use This?	What Do I Need?
VMware NSX	VM-Series Firewall License (BYOL) Panorama VM-Series plugin Panorama plugin for NSX

Now that you have created the redirection rules on the NSX-T Manager, you can now use Panorama for centrally administering policies on the VM-Series firewalls.

To manage centralized policy, attach the Dynamic Address Group as a source or destination address in security policy and push it to the firewalls; the firewalls can dynamically retrieve the IP addresses of the virtual machines that are included in each security group to enforce compliance for traffic that originates from or is destined to the virtual machines in the specified group.

Log in to Panorama.
Create Dynamic Address Groups.
1. Select ObjectsAddress Groups.
2. Select the Device Group you created for managing your VM-Series on the NSX-T firewall from the Device Group drop-down.
3. Click Add and enter a Name and Description for the Dynamic Address Group.
4. Select Type as Dynamic.
5. Add Match Criteria to your Dynamic Address Group.
  
  Some browser extensions may block API calls between Panorama and NSX-T, which prevents Panorama from receiving match criteria. If Panorama displays no match criteria and you're using browser extensions, disable the extensions and Synchronize Dynamic Objects to populate the tags available to Panorama.
6. Click Add Match Criteria.
7. Select the And or Or operator and click the plus (+) icon next to the security group name to add it to the Dynamic Address Group.
  
  The security groups that display in the match criteria dialog are derived from the groups you defined on the NSX-T Manager. Only the groups that are referenced in the security policies and from which traffic is redirected to the VM-Series firewall are available here.
8. Click OK.
9. Repeat these steps to create the appropriate number of Dynamic Address Groups required for your deployment.
10. Commit your changes.
Create security policy rules.
1. Select PoliciesSecurityPrerules.
2. Select the Device Group that you created for managing the VM-Series firewalls on NSX-T in Create Template Stacks and Device Groups on Panorama.
3. Click Add and enter a Name and a Description for the rule. In this example, the security rule allows all traffic between the WebFrontEnd servers and the Application servers.
4. Select the Source Zone and Destination Zone. The zone name must be the same in both columns.
5. For the Source Address and Destination Address, select or type in an address, address group or region. In this example, we select an address group, the Dynamic Address Group you created previously.
6. Select the Application to allow. In this example, we create an Application Group that includes a static group of specific applications that are grouped together.
  Click Add and select New Application Group.
  Click Add to select the application to include in the group.
  Click OK to create the application group.
7. Specify the action— Allow or Deny—for the traffic, and optionally attach the default security profiles for antivirus, antispyware, and vulnerability protection, under Profiles.
8. Repeats the steps above to create the pertinent policy rules.
9. Click Commit, select Commit Type as Panorama. Click OK.
Apply the policies to the VM-Series firewalls for NSX-T.
1. Click Commit, and select Commit Type Device Groups.
2. Select the device group, NSX-T Device Group in this example and click OK.
3. Verify that the commit is successful.
Validate that the members of the Dynamic Address Group are populated on the VM-Series firewall.
1. From Panorama, switch device context to launch the web interface of a firewall to which you pushed policies.
2. On the VM-Series firewall, select PoliciesSecurity, and select a rule.
3. Select the drop-down arrow next to the address group link, and select Inspect. You can also verify that the match criteria are accurate.
4. Click the more link and verify that the list of registered IP addresses is displayed.
  
  The policy will be enforced for all IP addresses that belong to this address group, and are displayed here.
(Optional) Use a template to push a base configuration for network and device configuration such as DNS server, NTP server, Syslog server, and login banner.

Refer to the Panorama Administrator’s Guide for information on using templates.
Create a Zone Protection profile and attach it to a zone.

A zone protection profile provides flood protection and has the ability to protect against port scanning, port sweeps, and packet-based attacks. It allows you to secure intratier and inter-tier traffic between virtual machines within your data center and traffic from the internet that is destined to the virtual machines (workloads) in your data center.
1. Select your Template.
2. Select NetworkNetwork ProfilesZone Protection to add and configure a new profile.
3. Select NetworkZones, click the default-zone listed and select the profile in the Zone Protection Profile drop down.
Create a DoS Protection profile and attach it to a DoS Protection policy rule.
1. Select your Device Group.
2. Select ObjectsSecurity ProfilesDoS Protection to add and configure a new profile.
  A classified profile allows the creation of a threshold that applies to a single source IP. For example, you can configure a max session rate for an IP address that matched the policy, and then block that single IP address once the threshold is triggered.
  An aggregate profile allows the creation of a max session rate for all packets matching the policy. The threshold applies to the new session rate for all IP addresses combined. Once the threshold is triggered, it affects all traffic that matches the policy.
3. Create a new DoS Protection policy rule in PolicyDoS Protection, and attach the new profile to it.