Exercise 3 – Adding a Snort IDS to pfSense
Earlier, we discussed having Snort as part of the Security Onion appliance, functioning as an IDS for the internal network. We will now install Snort as a package add-on to the pfSense firewall, with the aim of adding intrusion prevention system (IPS) functionality on the edge of our network. The emphasis is on prevention here, not detection. We want the firewall to be able to stop attacks aimed at our network from the outside or discovered leaving our network from the inside. Industrial environments typically want to stay away from active controls on the internal (industrial) network, as those active controls could interrupt legitimate processes and therefore cause downtime to production.
Having active controls between an untrusted zone (the enterprise or the Industrial Demilitarized Zone (IDMZ) and a trusted zone (the industrial network) adds more benefits than risk, however. Production processes should not rely on business or...