The Cisco ASA is a great tool for Cyber Threat Defense. In part one of this blog I described the 3 components of Cisco’s threat defense solution. In this half I will be showing you some more benefits of the solution, and how it can be used in correlation with other technologies to give you end to end visibility in your network.

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In our February 14th webcast, we will present how the Cisco ASA NSEL exports are used to detect network threats that could be missed by the Cisco ASA threat detection logic.  We’ll explain how to improve cyber security layers.

Attendees on the webcast will learn:

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Although the Cisco ASA NetFlow exports have had some problems in the past, Cisco was the first vendor to export flows from a firewall so a few issues out of the gate are almost expected.  Despite a few enigmas, it was still great to have and certainly better than nothing. In order to optimize the network for speed and reliability, IT professionals are always looking for more visibility into traffic. Therefore more information exported via NetFlow is always better. Read more »

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The latest software update to the Cisco ASA v8.4(5) dramatically changed the way vendors report on NetFlow and NetFlow Security Event Logging (NSEL).   This webcast will explain the changes in the export that bring additional value to your business.  Topics covered include:

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Recently we created a bunch of new NetFlow reports for the exports and a solution for NAT Session Logging was one of the goals. This is not the first time we have created reports for this. We have also created NetFlow NAT Reports for:

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NetFlow has come a long way in the last few years.  For example, here’s a list of some new information that can now be monitored and filtered on by exporting NetFlow or IPFIX packets from your routers, switches, and firewalls.

•    Medianet
•    Host/Application Latency
•    VoIP with Caller ID
•    Configuring Cisco ASA NetFlow Exports
•    NBAR
•    URLs
•    Mac Address and VLAN

Now that’s a whole lot of information that you can get from your NetFlow Analyzer!

So what is all this new information?

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Our Product Manager, Michael Patterson, has recorded another great video about configuring NetFlow exports on the Cisco ASA Firewall using ASDM.

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So, have you asked yourself, should I upgrade to Flexible NetFlow?  And if you have, has the next question been, why?

Here are 10 reasons for using Flexible NetFlow over NetFlow v5.  We posted a blog some time ago on What is Flexible NetFlow (FnF)  that might be helpful to those not familiar with FnF.

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Over  the last few weeks I have taken a number of support calls from customers who were looking for some assistance configuring their Cisco ASA. So I figured that I would take this opportunity to revisit some older blog subjects.

In my opinion, the easiest way to get NSEL exporting from these security appliances is through the use of the ASDM interface. This simple, GUI-based firewall management tool allows you to quickly configure the Cisco ASA without having to use the cumbersome command-line interface.

And that brings me to the subject of this blog.

Configuring the Cisco ASA using the CLI is really not that much different that configuring NetFlow on any other router or switch. You define your timeout value, flow export destination, and which interface is going to send the export. The difference is that you need to set up a service policy, and access rules that allow the export. As well as define which events are going to get exported and where.

So let’s get started.

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I was talking with our newly appointed Pre-Sales Support Specialist, Scott, the other day when we realized that we don’t have a NetFlow Glossary blog, so I wanted to take this opportunity to consolidate some resources and highlight some of the key NetFlow terminology that we find ourselves talking about on a daily basis.

NetFlow Terminology:

Bidirectional Flows
Flexible NetFlow
Ingress vs. Egress
Interface 0
ip-flow timeout active 1
IPFIX
ip route-cache flow vs. ip flow ingress
NBAR
NetFlow Collector and Analyzer
NetFlow Exporters
NetFlow Options Templates
NetFlow Probe
NetFlow Replicator
NetFlow v5 vs. v9
NSEL
sFlow

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