Guidance and Strategies to Protect Network Edge Devices

This set of guidance, led by international cybersecurity authorities, is intended to help organizations protect their network edge devices and appliances, such as firewalls, routers, virtual private networks (VPN) gateways, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, internet-facing servers, and internet-facing operational technology (OT) systems.

• Security Considerations for Edge Devices, led by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), a part of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, provides real-world edge device compromises, an overview of threats to these devices, mitigations for administrators to use to reduce risk of compromise, and recommendations for manufacturers to make their products secure by design.
• Digital Forensics Monitoring Specifications for Products of Network Devices and Applications, led by the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-UK), highlights that necessary security logs, remote logging security and data collection features by default or that require no additional configuration enable network defenders to easily detect and investigate malicious activity following a cyber intrusion.
• Mitigation Strategies for Edge Devices: Executive Guidance and Mitigation Strategies for Edge Devices: Practitioner Guidance, two separate guides led by the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASD’s ACSC), provide a summary of mitigation strategies and best practices on securing, hardening, and managing edge devices effectively, and technical details on seven mitigation strategies for operational, procurement and cybersecurity staff to implement to reduce risk to edge devices.

Device manufacturers, please visit CISA’s Secure by Design page for more information on how to align development processes with the goal of reducing the prevalence of vulnerabilities in devices. Critical infrastructure owners and operators, please see Secure by Demand: Priority Considerations for Operational Technology Owners and Operators when Selecting Digital Products for guidance on procuring secure products.