NetBackup and Veritas Appliances Hardening Guide
- Top recommendations to improve your NetBackup and Veritas appliances security posture
- Introduction
- Keeping all systems and software updated
- Enabling multifactor authentication
- Increasing the appliance security level
- Implementing an immutable data vault
- Securing credentials
- Reducing network exposure
- Enabling encryption
- Enabling catalog protection
- Enabling malware scanning and anomaly detection
- Enabling security observability
- Restricting user access
- Configuring a sign-in banner
- Steps to protect Flex Appliance
- About Flex Appliance hardening
- Managing single sign-on (SSO)
- Managing user authentication with smart cards or digital certificates
- About lockdown mode
- Using network access control
- Using an external certificate
- Forwarding logs
- Creating a NetBackup WORM storage server instance
- Configuring an isolated recovery environment on a WORM storage server
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog on a WORM storage server
- Using a sign-in banner
- Steps to protect NetBackup Appliance
- About NetBackup Appliance hardening
- About single sign-on (SSO) authentication and authorization
- About authentication using smart cards and digital certificates
- Disable user access to the NetBackup appliance operating system
- About Network Access Control
- About data encryption
- FIPS 140-2 conformance for NetBackup Appliance
- About implementing external certificates
- About forwarding logs to an external server
- Creating the appliance login banner
- Steps to protect NetBackup
- About NetBackup hardening
- Configure NetBackup for single sign-on (SSO)
- Configure user authentication with smart cards or digital certificates
- Access codes
- Workflow to configure immutable and indelible data
- Add a configuration for an external CMS server
- Configuring an isolated recovery environment on a NetBackup BYO media server
- About FIPS support in NetBackup
- Installing KMS
- Workflow for external KMS configuration
- Validating KMS credentials
- Configuring KMS credentials
- Configuring KMS
- Creating keys in an external KMS
- Workflow to configure data-in-transit encryption
- Workflow to use external certificates for NetBackup host communication
- About certificate revocation lists for external CA
- Configuring an external certificate for the NetBackup web server
- Configuring the primary server to use an external CA-signed certificate
- Configuring an external certificate for a clustered primary server
- Configuring a NetBackup host (media server, client, or cluster node) to use an external CA-signed certificate after installation
- Configuration options for external CA-signed certificates
- ECA_CERT_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_TRUST_STORE_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_KEY_PASSPHRASEFILE for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_CHECK for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_PATH for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_PATH_SYNC_HOURS for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_CRL_REFRESH_HOURS for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_DISABLE_AUTO_ENROLLMENT for NetBackup servers and clients
- ECA_DR_BKUP_WIN_CERT_STORE for NetBackup servers and clients
- MANAGE_WIN_CERT_STORE_PRIVATE_KEY option for NetBackup primary servers
- Guidelines for managing the primary server NetBackup catalog
- About protecting the MSDP catalog
- How to set up malware scanning
- About backup anomaly detection
- Send audit events to system logs
- Send audit events to log forwarding endpoints
- Display a banner to users when they sign in
Enabling security observability
To detect and prevent threats, organizations need to promptly spot malicious insiders, compromised accounts, malware infections, and other problems. With NetBackup and Veritas appliances, you can forward logs to an external log management server or a security information and event management (SIEM) solution. The logs include elevated shell commands for the appliances and have consistent timestamp formats, which are necessary for accurate and efficient event correlations and log analysis.
SIEM, SOAR, and XDR platforms are tools to combat unwanted trends and unsanctioned actions in IT ecosystems. NetBackup audit messages can be custom filtered and consumed by SIEM platforms, which scan the system log of the primary server and digest that information to provide reports, insights, and alerts. Automated response integration within NetBackup can automatically pause clients to stop any spread of undesired data, and SOAR integrations allow further customized actions based on scenarios in the various message categories. NetBackup adds more capability to your ransomware response plans with the insight and control of audit messaging.
How to enable log forwarding:
Flex Appliance
See Forwarding logs.
NetBackup Appliance
NetBackup
Flex Appliance also includes a security meter to view and configure the security settings from one location. The security meter tracks the security settings and shows you a list of the available features with quick links to configure them. It is accessible from the Flex Appliance Console home page by a security administrator.
Figure: Security meter shows how the security meter works, or you can see it in action in the security meter demo.