If you are surfing any website...
If you are sending an email...
If you are watching a movie on Netflix...
If you are making an Skype call or Zoom meeting...
You are dealing with Packets.
Every parcel of digital information is transmitted across the internet in a specifically formatted piece of structured data. And this specifically formatted piece of structured data is called a 'Packet.'
Each packet contains the structured 'Metadata' that assures your data is routed/transmitted to its right destination. This metadata identifies traffic source, destination, content, and other pieces of valuable details.
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What Is Deep Packet Inspection?The smallest amount of data you can send over a network is called a packet. During deep packet inspection, a system examines those tiny pieces. Based on the results, your firewall might send the packet through, block it, or re-route it.
In Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), we are basically analyzing these packets thoroughly. Most medium-to-enterprise level companies or organisations, ISPs, Media companies, etc want rigorous DPI, to add an extra layer to their cybersecurity infrastructure.
It is also called packet sniffing and it is a method of examining the content of data packets as they pass by a checkpoint on the network.
With normal types of stateful packet inspection, the device only checks the information in the packet’s header, like the destination Internet Protocol (IP) address, source IP address, and port number, etc.
DPI examines a larger range of metadata and data connected with each packet your DPI device interfaces with. In this DPI meaning, the inspection process includes examining both the header and the data the packet is carrying (payload). In addition to the inspection capabilities of regular packet-sniffing technologies, DPI can find otherwise hidden threats within the data stream, such as attempts at data exfiltration, violations of content policies, malware, and more.
The whole premise of DPI is that -- Patterns reveals useful insights.
By studying metadata like headers using deep packet inspection (DPI) network specialists can learn-- how best to optimize their servers to reduce overhead, to detect and deter hackers, combat malware, and gain intimate details about user behavior, etc.
Remember:
Deep Packet Inspection is a fundamental cornerstone of enterprise network security. As a network defender, you want to sniff all traffic in and out of your network, as it is understandably useful for preventing and detecting intrusions. Detecting and blocking the IP of malicious traffic is particularly effective at fending off buffer-overflow and DDoS attacks.
Most ISPs also collect a huge amount of this metadata, as they are legally bound to do so. Whenever any law-enforcement agency need this data, they can access it from ISPs.
DPI isn't the only line of defense, but for many organizations, scanning and analyzing packets is the first line of defense.
As I have mentioned in last few posts, most contemporary IoT devices often lack standard firmware and security standards to protect these devices from becoming a part of a zombie botnet. DPI shields ISPs and your networks from IoT-based DDoS attacks too and help you learn more about critical IoT security flaws.
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How Can You Use DPI In Security?1.
DPI examines the contents of data packets using specific rules preprogrammed by the user or a network administrator, or an internet service provider (ISP). Then, it decides how to handle the threats it discovers. Not only can DPI identify the existence of threats but, using the contents of the packet and its header, it can also figure out where it came from. In this way, DPI can pinpoint the application or service that launched the threat.
2.
You can also set up DPI to work with filters that enable it to identify and re-route network traffic that comes from a specific online service or IP address.
3.
Your IPS or IDS system depends a lot on Deep Packet Inspection. Thus, it enables you to spot specific kinds of attacks that a regular firewall may not be able to detect.
4.
If your company has allowed your employees to bring their own devices (BYOD) to work or use them to connect to a virtual private network (VPN), then DPI can be used to prevent them from accidentally spreading spyware, worms, and viruses into your organization’s network.
5.
When DPI is properly implemented, its results allow you to have the option of deciding which applications your employees can interact with. If there are applications that may either threaten your network or hamper productivity, you can use DPI to determine if they are being accessed. Whenever you find that any such application is being accessed, you will be able to re-route their incoming traffic.
6.
DPI can clearly identify the packets coming to/from your most business-critical processes/applications, you can allot them higher priority over other less crucial packets, such as regular browsing packets. Further, if you are trying to overcome the burden of peer-to-peer downloading, DPI can be used to identify this specific type of transmission and throttle the data.
7.
Most modern NGFWs at your network’s edge, use the DPI to catch the malware before it enters your network and endangers its assets.
8.
In addition, DPI can give you visibility over the entire network, analyzing activity using heuristics to identify anything abnormal. Heuristics involves the examination of data packets in an effort to spot anything out of the ordinary that may signal a potential threat to your organization.
9.
DPI can also be used to inspect outbound traffic as it attempts to exit your network. You can set up filters designed to prevent data exfiltration. You can also use DPI to figure out where your data is going.
10.
You can also use the analytical capabilities of DPI to block usage patterns that violate company policy. DPI can also be used to block unauthorized access to data specific to applications approved by the company.
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Challenges Posed By DPIDPI can be a powerful tool. But it brings some tremendous challenges for you:
For example, many organizations have found that enabling DPI in their firewall appliances often introduces unacceptable network bottlenecks and performance degradation.
First reason is that these on-premises appliances are tied to corporate networks, which has its own workload and performance issues.
The second issue is that these organizations tend to backhaul ALL traffic emanating from remote users through this infrastructure for packets, to run through DPI inspection checkpoints.
The result is a tremendous amount of latency that is introduced for your large number of users/employees.
It results in another tendency that is of skipping DPI altogether. If no VPN services has been deployed, and these users are connecting to cloud and online resources directly, then they are ending up bypassing the network perimeter protections altogether. It is a lose-lose situation...
Then there's the challenge of encrypted traffic. While some firewalls do claim to perform deep packet inspection on HTTPS traffic, the process of decrypting data and inspecting it in-line with traffic-flows is a processor-intensive activity that overwhelms many hardware-based security devices. In response, administrators often choose to turn off the capability within their firewalls. Another lose-lose situation...
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Where Does The Solution Lie?You need to fully acknowledge the fact that the primary purpose of a FIREWALL still to guard at network perimeter.
Next, you can adopt a cloud-based 'Secure Web Gateway', e.g., Broadcom, McAfee, Cisco, ForcePoint, Zscaler, Netskope, iBoss, Merlo Security, etc to completely remove this performance burden of deep packet inspection, from these devices.
These Secure Web Gateways, can examine both HTTP and HTTPS traffic generated by your users regardless of their location. By offloading encrypted and remote user traffic through a cloud-based secure web gateway, you can scale up DPI's deep analysis of traffic without pressuring existing hardware-based devices.
In the same vein, this sort of architecture also makes it simpler to perform deep packet inspection outside the confines of the corporate network. This offers you a more consistent path to policy enforcement when you're managing security policies across multiple locations and a widespread remote user base that's connecting directly to the internet and cloud resources.
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your comment on the posts or topics, because when you do that you help me greatly in designing new quality article/post on cybersecurity.This Article Was Written & published by Meena R, Senior Manager - IT, at Luminis Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, India.
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