In this paper, you are asked to present a report on an Incident Response for Linux and Microsoft Workstations & SNORT as an Intrusion Detection System. You are required to answers all the questions mentioned below in your report.

Incident Response for Linux and Microsoft Workstations & SNORT as an Intrusion Detection System

When you are notified that a user’s workstation or system is acting strangely and log files indicate system compromise, what is the first thing you should do to the workstation or system and why?

2. When an anti-virus application identifies a virus and quarantines this file, does this mean the computer is eradicated of the virus and any malicious software?

3. Where would you check for processes and services enabled in the background of your Student VM workstation?

4. Where would log files typically be kept on most Linux systems?

5. What is the SANS Institute’s 6 step incident handling process?

6. What is the risk of starting to contain an incident prior to completing the identification process?

7. Why do you want to have the incident response handled by the security incident response team and not the IT organization?

8. Do you think it is a good idea to have a security policy defining incident response process in your organization?

9. Why should internal legal counsel be notified when a “Critical” security incident occurs?

10. The post-mortem, lessons learned step is the last in the incident response process. Why is this the most important step in the process?

PART 2:
1. What is the difference between an IDS or an IPS?

2. Why is it important to perform a network traffic baseline definition analysis?
3. Why is a port scan detected from the same IP on a subnet an alarming alert to receive from your IDS?

4. If the SNORT IDS captures the IP packets off the LAN segment for examination, is this an example of promiscuous mode operation? Are these packets saved or logged?

5. What is the difference between network –based IDS and a host-based IDS systems?

6. What are some weaknesses of an IDS/IPS solution at an Internet ingress/egress point in the LAN-to-WAN Domain?

7. Why is it important to tune IDS/IPS systems?

8. How can you prevent attackers performing reconnaissance and probing using Nmap and Nessus® port scanning and vulnerability assessment scanning tools?

9. Why is it a good idea to have host-based IDS’ enabled on critical servers and workstations?

10. Where should you implement IPS’ in your IT infrastructure?