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Securing the Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis, and Response System

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Date: Jul 3, 2008.

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Chapter Description

This chapter describes recommendations for securing MARS appliances, both physically and electronically.

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MARS Communications Requirements

Before you can protect MARS with a firewall, you first need to understand which TCP and UDP ports MARS requires to operate properly, and which of these carry outbound or inbound traffic. Table 4-1 provides a summary of all communications when MARS and the various monitored devices are all configured with default ports. Many or all of these can be changed, and you might need to modify this table for your installation.

Table 4-1. MARS TCP and UDP Ports

Port	Description	Direction
TCP/21	Used by MARS to retrieve switch and router configuration files from centralized servers. FTP uses additional TCP ports (usually TCP/20), and most firewalls allow this to occur automatically.	Outbound
TCP/22	Used for management access to MARS LCs and GCs.	Inbound
	Used by MARS to connect to devices when learning topology or investigating hosts.	Outbound
TCP/23	MARS uses Telnet as one method to connect to some network devices when learning topology or investigating hosts.	Outbound
TCP/25	Used by MARS to e-mail reports and alerts.	Outbound
UDP/53	Used by MARS to look up host name–to–IP address resolution.	Outbound
TCP/53	Used by MARS to look up host name–to–IP address resolution.	Outbound
TCP/80	Used by MARS to communicate with Cisco routers for Distributed Threat Mitigation (DTM).	Outbound
	Used by MARS to receive some events, including web logs from iPlanet and Apache web servers, as well as NetCache.	Inbound
UDP/123	Used by MARS to synchronize time with Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers.	Outbound
TCP/137	Used by MARS to pull events from Windows systems.	Outbound
UDP/161	Used for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) communications from MARS to monitored devices that use SNMP as the access method.	Outbound
UDP/162	Used by MARS to receive SNMP traps from monitored devices that are configured to use traps for logging.	Inbound
TCP/443	Used for management access to MARS LCs and GCs.	Inbound
	Used by MARS to pull security events from Cisco IDS 4.x and IPS 5.x sensors and Cisco IOS IPS.	Outbound
	Used by MARS GCs and LCs for communications between appliances.	Inbound and Outbound
TCP/445	Used by MARS to pull events from Windows systems.	Outbound
UDP/514	Used by MARS to receive syslog messages from monitored devices.	Inbound
UDP/2049	Used by MARS to write archive data using Network File System (NFS).	Outbound
UDP/2055	Used by MARS to receive NetFlow data from monitored devices.	Inbound
TCP/8444	Used for communications between MARS GC and LC appliances.	Inbound and Outbound
TCP/18184	Used by MARS to pull event logs from Check Point firewalls.	Outbound
TCP/18190	Used by MARS to retrieve configuration settings from Check Point firewalls.	Outbound
TCP/18210	Used by MARS to retrieve certificates from Check Point firewalls or management consoles.	Outbound
All TCP/UDP	Used for vulnerability assessment scanning by MARS if enabled.	Outbound

5. Network Security Recommendations | Next Section Previous Section

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