The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in partnership with international cybersecurity authorities, announced the release of comprehensive guidance to help organizations protect their network edge devices and appliances.
This collaborative effort, involving agencies from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other Five Eyes partners, addresses the growing threat landscape targeting firewalls, routers, virtual private networks (VPN) gateways, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, internet-facing servers, and operational technology (OT) systems.
Foreign adversaries routinely exploit software vulnerabilities in network edge devices to infiltrate critical infrastructure networks and systems, causing expensive, time-consuming, and reputationally catastrophic damage to public and private sector organizations.
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Edge devices act as boundaries between organizations’ internal enterprise networks and the internet, making them attractive targets for both skilled and unskilled malicious cyber actors.
Four Key Security Documents
The published guidance includes four critical documents developed by leading cybersecurity agencies.
“Security Considerations for Edge Devices,” led by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), provides real-world edge device compromises and mitigation recommendations for administrators.
The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK) developed “Digital Forensics Monitoring Specifications for Products of Network Devices and Applications,” emphasizing the importance of comprehensive logging and monitoring capabilities.
The Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC) produced two complementary guides: “Mitigation Strategies for Edge Devices: Executive Guidance” and “Mitigation Strategies for Edge Devices: Practitioner Guidance”.
These documents outline seven key mitigation strategies, including knowing the edge, procuring secure-by-design devices, applying hardening guidance and patches, implementing strong authentication, disabling unneeded features and ports, securing management interfaces, and centralizing monitoring for threat detection.
Organizational Vulnerabilities
Network edge devices face multiple critical vulnerabilities that threat actors actively exploit.
Research conducted by ASD across the Australian environment revealed that over two months, 17.9 million devices were visible to the public internet, with 212,000 identified as edge devices.
Edge devices are particularly vulnerable because they don’t support Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions, allowing threat actors to gain initial access to internal enterprise networks.
Common attack vectors include SSL/TLS offloading exploitation, where malicious actors gain access to edge devices and intercept unencrypted traffic.
Misconfiguration of edge devices increases exploitation risk, as each generation becomes more complex with additional features requiring organizations to open additional ports or make functionalities accessible over the internet.
Implementation Strategies
The guidance emphasizes implementing phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) across edge devices and using centralized authentication with role-based access control.
Organizations should establish automated or monitored patch management schedules, enable centralized off-device logging, and configure log levels to be as detailed as possible.
Network defenders should leverage out-of-band management networks and hardened hosts to reduce administrative credential exploitation risks.
Critical implementation includes Domain Name System (DNS) services and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services integration, as these are commonly used in conjunction with edge devices like wireless access points and VPN servers.
Organizations must maintain inventories of edge devices and their support timelines, managing end-of-life (EoL) and end-of-service-life (EoSL) devices to prevent unpatched vulnerabilities.
Network Edge Device Risk Factors
| Risk Factor | Description |
|---|---|
| Weak Authentication | Use of default or weak passwords, lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) |
| Insufficient Patch Management | Delayed or missing security updates and patches |
| Misconfiguration | Incorrect device settings, open ports, and unnecessary features enabled |
| Limited Logging and Monitoring | Inadequate forensic and logging capabilities to detect and investigate breaches |
| Lack of Secure-by-Design | Devices not designed with security as a priority, leading to vulnerabilities |
| Exposure to Internet | Internet-facing devices without proper protections increase attack surface |
| End-of-Life Devices | Use of devices no longer supported with security updates |
| Physical Tampering | Risk of hardware manipulation or unauthorized physical access |
Device manufacturers are encouraged to visit CISA’s Secure by Design page to align development processes with vulnerability reduction goals, while critical infrastructure operators should reference Secure by Demand guidance for procuring secure products.
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