Intrusion Policy Basics

Intrusion policies are defined sets of intrusion detection and prevention configurations that inspect traffic for security violations and, in inline deployments, can block or alter malicious traffic. Intrusion policies are invoked by your access control policy and are the system’s last line of defense before traffic is allowed to its destination.

At the heart of each intrusion policy are the intrusion rules. An enabled rule causes the system to generate intrusion events for (and optionally block) traffic matching the rule. Disabling a rule stops processing of the rule.

The system delivers several base intrusion policies, which enable you to take advantage of the experience of the Talos Intelligence Group. For these policies, Talos sets intrusion and preprocessor rule states (enabled or disabled), as well as provides the initial configurations for other advanced settings.

Tip

System-provided intrusion and network analysis policies are similarly named but contain different configurations. For example, the Balanced Security and Connectivity network analysis policy and the Balanced Security and Connectivity intrusion policy work together and can both be updated in intrusion rule updates. However, the network analysis policy governs mostly preprocessing options, whereas the intrusion policy governs mostly intrusion rules.

If you create a custom intrusion policy, you can:

  • Tune detection by enabling and disabling rules, as well as by writing and adding your own rules.

  • Use Cisco recommendations to associate the operating systems, servers, and client application protocols detected on your network with rules specifically written to protect those assets.

  • Configure various advanced settings such as external alerting, sensitive data preprocessing, and global rule thresholding.

  • Use layers as building blocks to efficiently manage multiple intrusion policies.

In an inline deployment, an intrusion policy can block and modify traffic:

  • Drop rules can drop matching packets and generate intrusion events. To configure an intrusion or preprocessor drop rule, set its state to Drop and Generate Events.

  • Intrusion rules can use the replace keyword to replace malicious content.

For intrusion rules to affect traffic, you must correctly configure drop rules and rules that replace content, as well as correctly deploy managed devices inline, that is, with inline interface sets. Finally, you must enable the intrusion policy’s drop behavior, or Drop when Inline setting.

When tailoring your intrusion policy, especially when enabling and adding rules, keep in mind that some intrusion rules require that traffic first be decoded or preprocessed in a certain way. Before an intrusion policy examines a packet, the packet is preprocessed according to configurations in a network analysis policy. If you disable a required preprocessor, the system automatically uses it with its current settings, although the preprocessor remains disabled in the network analysis policy web interface.

Caution

Because preprocessing and intrusion inspection are so closely related, the network analysis and intrusion policies examining a single packet must complement each other. Tailoring preprocessing, especially using multiple custom network analysis policies, is an advanced task.

After you configure a custom intrusion policy, you can use it as part of your access control configuration by associating the intrusion policy with one or more access control rules or an access control policy’s default action. This forces the system to use the intrusion policy to examine certain allowed traffic before the traffic passes to its final destination. A variable set that you pair with the intrusion policy allows you to accurately reflect your home and external networks and, as appropriate, the servers on your network.

Note that by default, the system disables intrusion inspection of encrypted payloads. This helps reduce false positives and improve performance when an encrypted connection matches an access control rule that has intrusion inspection configured.