Detecting and Preventing Unauthorized Outbound Traffic In Network Security

Detecting and Preventing Unauthorized Outbound Traffic in Network Security
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Detecting and Preventing Unauthorized Outbound Traffic in Network Security
Many security experts are more concerned with controlling inbound than outbound traffic. In particular, outbound traffic entails the information that is going out of a specific network. Indeed, it poses unique risks that should not be forgotten when securing or designing a computer network. Since it is difficult to close all ports and maintain access to the Internet, it is also not possible to eradicate all risks that are linked to outbound traffic. The most significant thing that security experts need to understand is the risks associated with different ports so that they can make informed decisions when securing a particular network. Renowned ports start from 0-1023, registered ones from 1024-49151, and dynamic ports from 49152-65535. For example, port 20 and 21 facilitate file transfer protocol (FTP), port 443 enhances hypertext transfer protocol security (HTTPS), and port 5050 is a multimedia control tool. In reality, detecting and preventing unauthorized outbound traffic in network security is a significant strategy that can enable security experts to make pragmatic decisions when designing or securing computer networks.
For any organization using computers to access the Internet, there must be communication between the hosts and the web. In other words, networks are usually designed to allow the flow of traffic within the corporate local area network (LAN) and to access relevant resources from the Internet. Specifically, the traffic is limited to the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) ports and the destination Internet Protocol (IP) address (Wippich, 2007). In one scenario, the traffic might communicate over a known port but on an unintended protocol. In the other scenario, the traffic can use the protocol that it is intended to but tunnel data in other unintended protocols. In both ways, there is a likelihood that security controls might engage in activities that are against corporate policies. Some of the risks linked to outbound network traffic based on the integrity, availability, and confidentiality triad include the access of malicious websites that might result in the compromise or infection of hosts, denial of services, malware distribution, and phishing. Others are insider information theft, unauthorized remote access, sniffing, and access to compromised network resources.
Outbound traffic is a significant weakness that makes numerous enterprises vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Organizations must devise proper ways to monitor their outbound connections. In some cases, legitimate applications can create outbound traffic without users realizing it. Some applications run in the background without being approved and utilize a firm’s resources unknowingly. They can create thousands of outbound connections, which are not identifiable on the process schedule. However, the only way that an organization can detect such outbound web connections is by monitoring its web logs regularly. That way, it becomes possible to identify unauthorized outbound connections and terminate them. If this network traffic is not detected in advance, it can lock out some computers in a network and restrict users from accessing various services. For this reason, organizations should use appropriate reporting tools to determine unusual or suspicious web activities. Security experts should analyze the system regularly so that they can spot any unexpected logs and shut them down. They should also scan the computer network to detect malicious programs, such as malware or spyware, and phishing attempts (Fernandes et al., 2018). When these individuals detect unusual activities, they should determine their source and the damage caused by performing a system audit. Other effective ways to identify outbound connections include inspecting top hosts that generate a high traffic volume, blocking ports and generating logs to see unauthorized attempts, monitoring entry attempts that have been denied by the firewall, determining traffic that has been sent to unusual locations, and detecting abnormal packet sizes.
Firewall policies should not give outbound traffic a free pass. In particular, traffic connections are bi-directional. On that note, it means that outbound connections can initial a handshake that can be used by some applications to facilitate inbound traffic unknowingly. For instance, take a scenario where an individual is calling his or her friend via Skype. One computer initiates the connection from an external server. Since the firewall does not restrict outbound traffic, a connection becomes established. In that case, another computer in the LAN can use this connection to send traffic to the network since the firewall allows outbound connections. The gadget can pull ...