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Manual Chapter : Integrating ASM and APM with Database Security Products

Applies To:

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BIG-IP ASM

  • 14.1.3, 14.1.2, 14.1.0
Manual Chapter

Integrating ASM and APM with Database Security Products

Overview: Integrating ASM and APM with database security products

You can deploy Application Security Manager™ (ASM) and Access Policy Manager(APM) with database security products, such as IBM®InfoSphere®Guardium® to increase security visibility, receive alerts about suspicious activity, and prevent attacks. When integrated with database security, ASM™ can provide information about each HTTP request and database query. This allows the database security system to correlate the web transaction with the database query to make a security assessment of the transaction. ASM also provides application level details to improve the database security system's logging and reporting.
For you to integrate ASM with a database security product, the database security server itself must have been configured and accessible on the network. On the BIG-IP system, you specify the host name or IP address of the database security server. Then, you enable database security integration for one or more security policies that are set up to protect web application resources.
When using database security, Application Security Manager monitors web application traffic and sends information about the users, the requests, and reporting events to the database security server. The following figure shows an example of how ASM can integrate with the IBM InfoSphere Guardium Database Activity Monitoring Appliance.
Integrating ASM and APM with external database security example
Integrating ASM and APM with external database security example
The security policy can get user names from requests using login pages configured from within ASM, or the policy can retrieve the user names from Access Policy Manager(APM). This implementation describes how to integrate ASM and APM™ with an external database security server. APM handles user authentication in this case and provides the information that is sent to the database security server.

Prerequisites for integrating ASM and APM with database security

In order to integrate a database security server from within Application Security Manager™ (ASM™) so that the security policy retrieves the user names from Access Policy Manager ®(APM), you need to perform basic these system configuration tasks according to the needs of your networking configuration:
  • Run the setup utility and create a management IP address.
  • License and provision ASM, APM, and Local Traffic Manager (LTM).
  • Configure a DNS address (
    System
    Configuration
    Device
    DNS
    ).
  • Configure an NTP server (
    System
    Configuration
    Device
    NTP
    ).
  • Restart ASM (at the command line, type
    tmsh restart /sys service asm
    ).

Creating a VLAN

VLANs
 represent a logical collection of hosts that can share network resources, regardless of their physical location on the network. You create a VLAN to associate physical interfaces with that VLAN.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Network
    VLANs
    .
    The VLAN List screen opens.
  2. Click
    Create
    .
    The New VLAN screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a unique name for the VLAN.
  4. In the
    Tag
     field, type a numeric tag, between 1-4094, for the VLAN, or leave the field blank if you want the BIG-IP system to automatically assign a VLAN tag.
    The VLAN tag identifies the traffic from hosts in the associated VLAN.
  5. If you want to use Q-in-Q (double) tagging, use the
    Customer Tag
     setting to perform the following two steps. If you do not see the
    Customer Tag
     setting, your hardware platform does not support Q-in-Q tagging and you can skip this step.
    1. From the
      Customer Tag
       list, select
      Specify
      .
    2. Type a numeric tag, from 1-4094, for the VLAN.
    The customer tag specifies the inner tag of any frame passing through the VLAN.
  6. For the
    Interfaces
     setting,
    1. From the
      Interface
       list, select an interface number.
    2. From the
      Tagging
       list, select
      Untagged
      .
    3. Click
      Add
      .
  7. For the
    Hardware SYN Cookie
     setting, select or clear the check box.
    When you enable this setting, the BIG-IP system triggers hardware SYN cookie protection for this VLAN.
    Enabling this setting causes additional settings to appear. These settings appear on specific BIG-IP platforms only.
  8. For the
    Syncache Threshold
     setting, retain the default value or change it to suit your needs.
    The
    Syncache Threshold
     value represents the number of outstanding SYN flood packets on the VLAN that will trigger the hardware SYN cookie protection feature.
    When the
    Hardware SYN Cookie
     setting is enabled, the BIG-IP system triggers SYN cookie protection in either of these cases, whichever occurs first:
    • The number of TCP half-open connections defined in the LTM setting
      Global SYN Check Threshold
       is reached.
    • The number of SYN flood packets defined in this
      Syncache Threshold
       setting is reached.
  9. For the
    SYN Flood Rate Limit
     setting, retain the default value or change it to suit your needs.
    The
    SYN Flood Rate Limit
     value represents the maximum number of SYN flood packets per second received on this VLAN before the BIG-IP system triggers hardware SYN cookie protection for the VLAN.
  10. Click
    Finished
    .
    The screen refreshes, and it displays the new VLAN in the list.

Creating a self IP address for a VLAN

Ensure that you have at least one VLAN configured before you create a self IP address.
Self IP addresses enable the BIG-IP system, and other devices on the network, to route application traffic through the associated VLAN.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Network
    Self IPs
    .
  2. Click
    Create
    .
    The New Self IP screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a unique name for the self IP address.
  4. In the
    IP Address
     field, type an IPv4 or IPv6 address.
    This IP address should represent the address space of the VLAN that you specify with the
    VLAN/Tunnel
     setting.
  5. In the
    Netmask
     field, type the network mask for the specified IP address.
    For example, you can type
    255.255.255.0
    .
  6. From the
    VLAN/Tunnel
     list, select the VLAN to associate with this self IP address.
    • On the internal network, select the internal or high availability VLAN that is associated with an internal interface or trunk.
    • On the external network, select the external VLAN that is associated with an external interface or trunk.
  7. Use the default values for all remaining settings.
  8. Click
    Finished
    .
    The screen refreshes, and displays the new self IP address.
The BIG-IP system can now send and receive TCP/IP traffic through the specified VLAN.

Creating a local traffic pool for application security

You can use a local traffic pool with Application Security Manager system to forward traffic to the appropriate resources.
Instead of doing it now, you can optionally create a pool if creating a virtual server during security policy creation.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Local Traffic
    Pools
    .
    The Pool List screen opens.
  2. Click
    Create
    .
    The New Pool screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a unique name for the pool.
  4. In the Resources area, for the
    New Members
     setting, add to the pool the application servers that host the web application:
    1. Type an IP address in the
      Address
       field.
    2. In the
      Service Port
       field, type a port number (for example, type
      80
       for the HTTP service), or select a service name from the list.
    3. Click
      Add
      .
  5. Click
    Finished
    .
The BIG-IP system configuration now includes a local traffic pool containing the resources that you want to protect using Application Security Manager.

Creating a virtual server to manage HTTPS traffic

You can create a virtual server to manage HTTPS traffic.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Local Traffic
    Virtual Servers
    .
    The Virtual Server List screen opens.
  2. Click
    Create
    .
    The New Virtual Server screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a unique name for the virtual server.
  4. In the
    Service Port
     field, type
    443
     or select
    HTTPS
     from the list.
  5. From the
    Configuration
     list, select
    Advanced
    .
  6. From the
    HTTP Profile
     list, select
    http
    .
  7. For the
    SSL Profile (Client)
     setting, from the
    Available
     list, select
    clientssl
    , and using the Move button, move the name to the
    Selected
     list.
  8. From the
    SSL Profile (Server)
     list, select
    serverssl
    .
    This setting ensures that there is an SSL connection between the HTTP virtual server and the external HTTPS server.
  9. From the
    Source Address Translation
     list, select
    Auto Map
    .
  10. From the
    Default Pool
     list, select the pool that is configured for application security.
  11. Click
    Finished
    .
The HTTPS virtual server appears in the Virtual Server List screen.

Creating a simple security policy

Before you can create a security policy, you must perform the minimal system configuration tasks required according to the needs of your networking environment.
You can use Application Security Manager to create a robust, yet simple, security policy that is tailored to protect your web application. This is the easiest way to create a security policy.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Security
    Application Security
    Security Policies
    Policies List
    .
    The Policies List screen opens.
  2. Click
    Create New Policy
    .
    You only see this button when no policy is selected.
  3. In the
    Policy Name
     field, type a name for the policy.
  4. Leave
    Policy Type
    , set to
    Security
    .
  5. For
    Policy Template
    , select
    Fundamental
    .
  6. For
    Virtual Server
    , click
    Configure new virtual server
     to specify where to direct application requests.
    1. For
      What type of protocol does your application use?
      , select
      HTTP
      ,
      HTTPS
      , or both.
    2. In the
      Virtual Server Name
       field, type a unique name.
    3. In the
      HTTP Virtual Server Destination
       field, type the address in IPv4 (
      10.0.0.1
      ) or IPv6 (
      2001:ed8:77b5:2:10:10:100:42/64
      ) format, and specify the service port.
      If you want multiple IP addresses to be directed here, use the
      Network
       setting.
    4. In the HTTP Pool Member setting, specify the addresses of the back-end application servers.
    5. From the
      Logging Profile
       list, select a profile such as
      Log illegal requests
       to determine which events are logged on the system.
  7. In the upper right corner, click
    Advanced
    .
    You can use default values for the Advanced settings but it's a good idea to take a look at them.
    • If you selected
      Fundamental
       or
      Comprehensive
       for the
      Policy Template
      ,
      Learning Mode
       is set to
      Automatic
       and
      Enforcement Mode
       is set to
      Blocking
      .
      If you need to change these values, set application language to a value other than
      Auto detect
      .
    • If you know the
      Application Language
      , select it or use
      Unicode (utf-8)
      .
    • To add specific protections (enforcing additional attack signatures) to the policy, for
      Server Technologies
      , select the technologies that apply to the back-end application servers.
    • You can configure trusted IP addresses that you want the security policy to consider safe.
  8. Click
    Create Policy
     to create the security policy.
ASM creates a security policy that immediately starts protecting your application. The enforcement mode of the security policy is set to Blocking. Traffic that is considered to be an attack such as traffic that is not compliant with HTTP protocol, has malformed payloads, uses evasion techniques, performs web scraping, contains sensitive information or illegal values is blocked. Other potential violations are reported but not blocked.
The system examines the traffic to the web application making suggestions for more specifically building the security policy. The Policy Builder selectively learns new entities like file types, parameters, and cookies used in requests to the application. When ASM processes sufficient traffic, it automatically adds the entities to the security policy, and enforces them.
The system applies a basic set of attack signatures to the security policy and puts them in staging (by default, for 7 days). If you specified server technologies, additional attack signatures are included. ASM reports common attacks discovered by comparison to the signatures but does not block these attacks until the staging period is over and they are enforced. That gives you a chance to be sure that these are actual attacks and not legitimate requests.
This is a good point at which send some traffic to test that you can access the application being protected by the security policy and check that traffic is being processed correctly by the BIG-IP system. Send the traffic to the virtual server destination address.

Creating an access profile

You create an access profile to provide the access policy configuration for a virtual server that establishes a secured session.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Access
    Profiles / Policies
    .
    The Access Profiles (Per-Session Policies) screen opens.
  2. Click
    Create
    .
    The New Profile screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a name for the access profile.
    A access profile name must be unique among all access profile and any per-request policy names.
  4. From the
    Profile Type
     list, select
    SSL-VPN
    .
    Additional settings display.
  5. From the
    Profile Scope
     list, retain the default value or select another.
    • Profile
      : Gives a user access only to resources that are behind the same access profile. This is the default value.
    • Virtual Server
      : Gives a user access only to resources that are behind the same virtual server.
    • Global
      : Gives a user access to resources behind any access profile that has global scope.
  6. To configure timeout and session settings, select the
    Custom
     check box.
  7. In the
    Inactivity Timeout
     field, type the number of seconds that should pass before the access policy times out. Type
    0
     to set no timeout.
    If there is no activity (defined by the
    Session Update Threshold
     and
    Session Update Window
     settings in the Network Access configuration) between the client and server within the specified threshold time, the system closes the current session.
  8. In the
    Access Policy Timeout
     field, type the number of seconds that should pass before the access profile times out because of inactivity.
    Type
    0
     to set no timeout.
  9. In the
    Maximum Session Timeout
     field, type the maximum number of seconds the session can exist.
    Type
    0
     to set no timeout.
  10. In the
    Max Concurrent Users
     field, type the maximum number of users that can use this access profile at the same time.
    Type
    0
     to set no maximum.
  11. In the
    Max Sessions Per User
     field, type the maximum number of concurrent sessions that one user can start.
    Type
    0
     to set no maximum.
    Only a user in the administrator, application editor, manager, or resource administrator role has access to this field.
  12. In the
    Max In Progress Sessions Per Client IP
     field, type the maximum number of concurrent sessions that can be in progress for a client IP address.
    When setting this value, take into account whether users will come from a NAT-ed or proxied client address and, if so, consider increasing the value accordingly. The default value is 128.
    Only a user in the administrator, application editor, manager, or resource administrator role has access to this field.
    F5 does not recommend setting this value to
    0
     (unlimited).
  13. Select the
    Restrict to Single Client IP
     check box to restrict the current session to a single IP address.
    This setting associates the session ID with the IP address.
    Only a user in the administrator, application editor, manager, or resource administrator role has access to this field.
    Upon a request to the session, if the IP address has changed the request is redirected to a logout page, the session ID is deleted, and a log entry is written to indicate that a session hijacking attempt was detected. If such a redirect is not possible, the request is denied and the same events occur.
  14. To configure logout URIs, in the Configurations area, type each logout URI in the
    URI
     field, and then click
    Add
    .
  15. In the
    Logout URI Timeout
     field, type the delay in seconds before logout occurs for the customized logout URIs defined in the
    Logout URI Include
     list.
  16. To configure SSO:
    • For users to log in to multiple domains using one SSO configuration, skip the settings in the SSO Across Authentication Domains (Single Domain mode) area. You can configure SSO for multiple domains only after you finish the initial access profile configuration.
    • For users to log in to a single domain using an SSO configuration, configure settings in the SSO Across Authentication Domains (Single Domain mode) area, or you can configure SSO settings after you finish the initial access profile configuration.
  17. In the
    Domain Cookie
     field, specify a domain cookie, if the application access control connection uses a cookie.
  18. In the
    Cookie Options
     setting, specify whether to use a secure cookie.
    • If the policy requires a secure cookie, select the
      Secure
       check box to add the
      secure
       keyword to the session cookie.
    • If you are configuring an LTM access scenario that uses an HTTPS virtual server to authenticate the user and then sends the user to an existing HTTP virtual server to use applications, clear this check box.
  19. If the access policy requires a persistent cookie, in the
    Cookie Options
     setting, select the
    Persistent
     check box.
    This sets cookies if the session does not have a webtop. When the session is first established, session cookies are not marked as persistent; but when the first response is sent to the client after the access policy completes successfully, the cookies are marked persistent. Persistent cookies are updated for the expiration timeout every 60 seconds. The timeout is equal to session inactivity timeout. If the session inactivity timeout is overwritten in the access policy, the overwritten value will be used to set the persistent cookie expiration.
  20. From the
    SSO Configurations
     list, select an SSO configuration.
  21. In the Language Settings area, add and remove accepted languages, and set the default language.
    A browser uses the highest priority accepted language. If no browser language matches the accepted languages list, the browser uses the default language.
  22. Click
    Finished
    .
The access profile displays in the Access Profiles List. Default-log-setting is assigned to the access profile.
To add an SSO configuration for multiple domains, click
SSO / Auth Domains
 on the menu bar. To provide functionality with an access profile, you must configure the access policy. The default access policy for a profile denies all traffic and contains no actions. Click
Edit
 in the
Access Policy
 column to edit the access policy.

Configuring an access policy

You configure an access policy to provide authentication, endpoint checks, and resources for an access profile. This procedure configures a simple access policy that adds a logon page, gets user credentials, submits them to an authentication type of your choice, then allows authenticated users, and denies others.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Access
    Profiles / Policies
    .
    The Access Profiles (Per-Session Policies) screen opens.
  2. Click the name of the access profile you want to edit.
  3. On the menu bar, click
    Access Policy
    .
  4. For the
    Visual Policy Editor
     setting, click the
    Edit access policy for Profile
    policy_name
     link.
    The visual policy editor opens the access policy in a separate window or tab.
  5. Click the
    (+)
     icon anywhere in the access policy to add a new item.
    Only an applicable subset of access policy items is available for selection in the visual policy editor for any access profile type.
    A popup screen opens, listing predefined actions on tabs such as General Purpose, Authentication, and so on.
  6. On the Logon tab, select
    Logon Page
     and click the
    Add Item
     button.
    The Logon Page Agent properties screen opens.
  7. Click
    Save
    .
    The Access Policy screen reopens.
  8. On the rule branch, click the plus sign
    (+)
     between
    Logon Page
     and
    Deny
    .
  9. Set up the appropriate authentication and client-side checks required for application access at your company, and click
    Add Item
    .
  10. Change the Successful rule branch from
    Deny
     to
    Allow
     and click the
    Save
     button.
  11. If needed, configure further actions on the successful and fallback rule branches of this access policy item, and save the changes.
  12. At the top of the screen, click the
    Apply Access Policy
     link to apply and activate your changes to this access policy.
  13. Click the
    Close
     button to close the visual policy editor.
To apply this access policy to network traffic, add the access profile to a virtual server.
To ensure that logging is configured to meet your requirements, verify the log settings for the access profile.

Adding the access profile to the virtual server

  1. On the Main tab, click
    Local Traffic
    Virtual Servers
    .
    The Virtual Server List screen opens.
  2. Click the name of the virtual server you want to modify.
  3. In the Access Policy area, from the
    Access Profile
     list, select the access profile that you configured earlier.
  4. Click
    Update
     to save the changes.

Configuring a database security server

To integrate Application Security Manager (ASM) with a third-party database security product, you need to configure the database security server on ASM. You can configure one database security server per system.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Security
    Options
    Application Security
    Integrated Services
    Database Security
    .
    The Database Security Configuration screen opens.
  2. In the
    Server Host Name/IP Address
     field, type the host name or IP address of the database security server.
    If using SSL to establish a secured session between the BIG-IP system and the database security server, type the IP address of a virtual server configured for the secure connection. The virtual server uses any open IP address for the destination, the IBM Guardium port (16016, by default) for the service port,
    serverssl
     or a customized profile for the
    SSL Profile (Server)
     setting, and specifies a default pool (containing one member, the database security server, using its IP address and service port, typically, 16016).
  3. For
    Server Port Number
    , type the port number of the database server.
    The default value is 16016, the port used by IBM InfoSphere Guardium.
  4. If you want the system to wait for an ACK response from the database security server before sending the request to the application server, from the
    Request Hold Timeout
     list, select
    Enabled
     and type the number of milliseconds to wait for the response.
    The default value is 5 milliseconds.
    When this setting is enabled, the system forwards the request to the application server as soon as the database security server sends an ACK, or when the timeout has passed. If you leave this setting disabled, the system forwards the request to the application server immediately.
  5. Click
    Save
    .
    The system saves the configuration settings.
The Application Security Manager is now configured to connect to the database security server.
For ASM to forward request data to the database security server, you next need to enable database security integration in one or more security policies.

Enabling database security integration with ASM and APM

Before you can enable database security integration, you need to have created a security policy to protect your web application. For the policy to retrieve the user names of those making requests, you need to have set up Access Policy Manager(APM) on the BIG-IP system.
You enable database security integration in a security policy so that Application Security Manager (ASM) forwards request information to a third-party database server.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Security
    Application Security
    Integrated Services
    Database Security
    .
    The Database Security screen opens.
  2. In the
    Current edited security policy
     list near the top of the screen, verify that the security policy shown is the one you want to work on.
  3. Select the
    Database Security Integration
     check box.
  4. For
    User Source
    , select
    Use APM Usernames and Session ID
    .
    The system uses Access Policy Manager (APM) user names and session ID to determine the user source. You can choose this option only if you have APM licensed and provisioned.
  5. Click
    Save
    .
    The system saves the configuration settings.
The Application Security Manager connects to the database security server and can forward request data to it.

Implementation result

You have set up a BIG-IP system to use Application Security Manager™ (ASM) to secure application traffic, and Access Policy Manager™ (APM) to check user credentials.
Client traffic is routed to the virtual server for the web application. At first, traffic is handled by the APM module. APM® verifies user credentials and allows those with valid credentials to use web application. APM also sends user names and session IDs of valid users to ASM™. After that, ASM checks for security violations and forwards traffic that meets the security policy requirements to the backend server.
The database security server includes the application and user information provided by ASM and APM, so it can be viewed in logs and reports on that system. The database security server can perform a more in depth security assessment of the web request.
If you want to review reports and event logs that associate the user name with the session information on the BIG-IP system, you can set up session tracking (by enabling session awareness). When session awareness is enabled, you can see the user names on the Event Logs: Application: Requests screen in the General Details section of specific requests. IN addition, the Reporting: Application: Charts screen displays the users who sent the illegal requests.
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