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TODAY'S TIP: Raising the security bar for the Windows 2000 MCSE
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"Raising the security bar for the Windows 2000 MCSE"
By Ed Tittel, LANWrights, Inc.
In the wake of the Code Red worm, some experts have voiced the
opinion that the Windows MCSE is light on security. While I can't
dispute the relative lack of security coverage in the required core
exams (70-210, 70-215, 70-216, and 70-217), there are two exams on
the Windows 2000 MCSE track that cover most of the important security
bases pretty well:
- 70-220 Designing Security for a Microsoft Windows 2000 Network
- 70-227 Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft
Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000, Enterprise
Edition
Given the overall requirements for obtaining a Windows MCSE these
days, pursuing this approach to the MCSE curriculum shows a profound
interest in (or bias toward) security matters. Ironically, it's also
entirely possible -- and statistics on exams indicate highly likely
as well -- that somebody could upgrade an existing MCSE or obtain a
new one without taking either or both of these exams. That said,
between these two exams, the most important Win2k technical security
topics are covered.
The 70-220 exam deals with the broad range of internal corporate
security issues and design topics, among them:
- Corporate or organizational requirements for security, including
risk analysis, creating security policies and mapping those policies
into organizational, geographical and political realities.
- Understanding how a company or organizational IT infrastructure and
information assets define security requirements.
- The impact of security designs on existing systems and
applications. This also includes upgrades, new product deployments,
technical support requirements and integrating security concerns into
network and systems management.
- Creating a proper Windows 2000 security infrastructure including
audit policies, delegation of authority, placement and inheritance of
group security policies, authentication strategies, PKI
infrastructures and network services security.
- Designing security for communications channels, including
SMB-signing, IPSec solutions, VPN links and remote access controls.
The 70-227 addresses an equally broad range of security issues and
design topics, but focuses on the peripheries or "security
boundaries" between organizational units and the outside world via
the Internet. Topics include:
- Managing network address translations, local address tables and
name- and address-handling services.
- Configuring and managing ISA Server's proxy, multimedia streaming
and remote access capabilities.
- Managing VPN connections through ISA server, including VPN
endpoints at the ISA server, and VPN pass-throughs.
- Configuring, securing and maintaining ISA Server's firewall
capabilities, including packet filters, access control and bandwidth
policies, especially policy elements such as schedules, bandwidth
priorities, destination sets, client address sets, protocol
definitions and content groups.
- Configuring and managing client computers for ISA Server services,
including client authentication, network context management, network
address translation (SecureNAT), firewall client and Web browser
software.
- Managing ISA Server, including configuring intrusion detection,
related alerts and alarms, monitoring alert status, checking ports
and connections and analyzing ISA Server performance.
In addition, this exam also covers Internet acceleration topics, such
as those related to high availability options (clustering and load
balancing) and cache management that do not have direct security
implications.
Between these two exams, MCSE candidates can glean important aspects
of designing, implementing, configuring, managing and troubleshooting
their organization's security infrastructure. But if they want to get
up-to-speed for a full-fledged security certification like CISSP,
SANS-GIAC, or ICSA, they'll also need to bone up on:
- Legal and ethical matters related to privacy and confidentiality,
plus investigation and prosecution of intrusions or unauthorized
access.
- Potential vulnerabilities related to applications and systems
design and development.
- Cryptography, including symmetric and asymmetric keys, PKI design
and deployment and certificate services.
- Physical security policies, practices, procedures and auditing
techniques.
For generalist MCSE, however, the 70-220 and 70-227 combo does a
pretty good job preparing candidates for key Win2k technical security
issues. Though MCSEs aren't yet required to master these topics, they
certainly have the opportunity to do so within the current MCSE
framework. Whether these optional elements will ever become required
-- or if required elements start to include more security coverage --
is anybody's guess. But recent events and the growing concern for
security demonstrate that one or the other scenario is increasingly
likely and warranted.
Ed Tittel is a principal at a small content development company based
in Austin, Texas, and the creator of the Exam Cram series, and has
worked on over 30 certification-related books on Microsoft, Novell
and Sun related topics.
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