Finding Bad with Splunk

There is such a deluge of information that it can be hard for information security teams to know where to focus their time and energy. This paper will recommend common Linux and Windows tools to scan networks and systems, store results to local filesystems, analyze results, and pass any new data to Splunk. Splunk will then help security teams narrow in on what has changed within the networks and systems by alerting the security teams to any differences between old baselines and new scans. In addition, security teams may not even be paying attention to controls, like whitelisting blocks, that successfully prevent malicious activities. Monitoring failed application execution attempts can give security teams and administrators early warnings that someone may be trying to subvert a system. This paper will guide the security professional on setting up alerts to detect security events of interest like failed application executions due to whitelisting. To solve these problems, the paper will discuss the first five Critical Security Controls and explain what malicious behaviors can be uncovered as a result of alerting. As the paper progresses through the controls, the security professional is shown how to set up baseline analysis, how to configure the systems to pass the proper data to Splunk, and how to configure Splunk to alert on events of interest. The paper does not revolve around how to implement technical controls like whitelisting, but rather how to effectively monitor the controls once they have been implemented.