This course uses lectures and hands-on exercises to give participants real-time experience in setting up and configuring the BIG-IP® Advanced Firewall Manager system. Students are introduced to the AFM user interface, stepping through various options that demonstrate how AFM is configured to build a network firewall and to detect and protect against DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Reporting and log facilities are also explained and used in the course labs. Further Firewall functionality and additional DoS facilities for DNS and SIP traffic are discussed.

Audience

This course is intended for system and network administrators responsible for the configuration and ongoing administration of
a BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) system.

Students must complete one of the following F5 prerequisites before attending this course:

Administering BIG-IP instructor-led course or F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator

The following free web-based courses, although optional, will be very helpful for any student with limited BIG-IP administration and configuration experience.

Getting Started with BIG-IP web-based training

Getting Started with BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) web-based training

Getting Started with BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) web-based training

The following general network technology knowledge and experience are recommended before attending any F5 Global Training Services instructor-led course:

OSI model encapsulation

Routing and switching

Ethernet and ARP

TCP/IP concepts

IP addressing and subnetting

NAT and private IP addressing

Default gateway

Network firewalls

LAN vs. WAN

The following course-specific knowledge and experience is suggested before attending this course:

HTTP and DNS protocols

Students should be able to:

Configure and manage an AFM system

Configure AFM Network Firewall in a positive or negative security model

Configure Network Firewall to allow or deny network traffic using rules based on protocol, source, destination, geography, and other predicate types

Prebuild firewall rules using lists and schedule components

Enforce firewall rules immediately or test them using policy staging

Use Packet Tester and Flow Inspector features to check network connections against your security configurations for Network Firewall, IP intelligence and DoS features

Configure various IP Intelligence features to identify, record, allow or deny access by IP address

Configure the Device DoS detection and mitigation feature to protect the BIG-IP device and all applications from multiple types of attack vectors

Configure DoS detection and mitigation on a per-profile basic to protect specific applications from attack

Use DoS Dynamic Signatures to automatically protect the system from DoS attacks based on long term traffic and resource load patterns

Configure and use the AFM local and remote log facilities

Configure and monitor AFM’s status with various reporting facilities

Export AFM system reports to your external monitoring system directly or via scheduled mail

Allow chosen traffic to bypass DoS checks using Whitelists

Isolate potentially bad clients from good using the Sweep Flood feature

Isolate and re-route potentially bad network traffic for further inspection using IP Intelligence Shun functionality

Restrict and report on certain types of DNS requests using DNS Firewall

Configure, mitigate, and report on DNS based DoS attacks with the DNS DoS facility

Configure, mitigate, and report on SIP based DoS attacks with the SIP DoS facility

Configure, block, and report on the misuse of system services and ports using the Port Misuse feature

Build and configure Network Firewall rules using BIG-IP iRules

Be able to monitor and do initial troubleshooting of various AFM functionality

Configuration and management of the BIG-IP AFM system

AFM Network Firewall concepts

Network firewall options and modes

Network firewall rules, policies, address/port lists, rule lists and schedules

IP Intelligence facilities of dynamic black and white lists, IP reputation database and dynamic IP shunning.

Detection and mitigation of DoS attacks

Event logging of firewall rules and DoS attacks

Reporting and notification facilities

DoS Whitelists

DoS Sweep/Flood

DNS Firewall and DNS DoS

SIP DoS

Port Misuse

Network Firewall iRules

Various AFM component troubleshooting commands