In this short guide I wanted to walk through the steps to do a factory reset for the Cisco Firepower 2100 series. When doing these resets all configuration and the administrative password are removed, as well as the FTD (Firepower Threat Defense) app-instance. When the unit starts to boot it will reinstall the FTD app-instance to default configuration.
VACLs are another good layer of security to help control who can talk to who, much like access control lists that are in firewalls and routers, however the difference is VACLs operate at layer two of the OSI model. There could be situations where you have multiple hosts on the same LAN and want to block traffic from reaching certain hosts within that same network, how would you go about blocking that type of traffic without using a router or firewall? (Hint: Create a VACL)
So what has changed in the past 20 years? Take for example the network equipment that was manufactured in 1997, how did you configure that equipment? I would imagine it involved a serial port, HyperTerminal and trusty command line. Was API even a thing back in 1997, was it common to have an API interface in network equipment like today? Why do we even need an API on the equipment in the first place? What changed? Well the year isn't 1997 anymore, that past us 20 years ago and the equipment we work with today looks and operates much differently than it did in 1997.
You have the FMC installed and connect to FTD device with configuration deployed but for what ever reason there is a problem and you need to enter the CLI on the Firepower device to troubleshoot the equipment and although you can't configure anything you can do show and debug commands to troubleshoot via the CLI. We have to enter the Diagnostic CLI and we can do this in two ways:
We could use HSRP or VRRP to have a redundant default gateway for our PC/server networks. Although this works well we now have hardware powered-on and just sitting around waiting for its counterpart to fail, we are not actively using it. We could split up networks or use multiple default gateways within the same network but who does that? Well if your router or layer three switch happens to have that Cisco logo on it and a software release of at least 12.2(14)S, please welcome and "slow clap" the Gateway Load Balancing protocol, who has been around since 2002!
This is short and hopefully helpful post on how to manually update Cisco Firepower Devices. I have run into this problem a couple of times which is pushing this update with the FMC sometimes just fails and it never really seems to download the update to the Firepower sensor. On the FMC it will stay on "Initializing" for an hour and timeout so here are the steps to manually update your Firepower Sensor:
Cisco is actively pushing their Firepower Threat Defense software with the new Firepower 2100 units on their way this summer in effort to eventually replace the ASA5525-X, ASA5545-X and ASA5555-X platforms. When using FTD you must also have the Firepower Management Center (FMC) available to manage and configure these devices. This gets difficult especially if you want to test things out because not everyone has Cisco Firepower lying around unused. How are you supposed to test and learn the depths of this product? (Hint: Cisco VIRL)
From its older brother IGRP which was developed in 1980s to overcome the limitations of RIP, EIGRP was an "Enhanced" IGRP protocol. The main purpose of EIGRP was to overcome the limitations of classful networks and make EIGRP a classless routing protocol. During designing of this protocol a different convergence algorithm was used making EIGRP that "hybrid" between distance-vector and link-state routing protocols. In this post we'll go over a basic design and setup for EIGRP, however instead of using the "classic way" let's look at configuring EIGRP using named mode which is available in Cisco IOS starting in version 15.2
If you don’t already know, site to site VPNs can be a cost-effective way for remote sites to connect to HQ resources instead of a lease line like using MPLS or Metro-E circuits. We can instead use a standard internet connection with a static IP, this is usually cheaper than a dedicated circuit. Our next steps are purchasing a firewall for the remote site (assuming you already have one at HQ) and setup a site to site VPN connection to make the connection. In this guide, I’ll demo a site to site VPN with a pair of ASAs as well as some additional commands to allow DHCP across the tunnel so that your HQ DHCP server can hand out addresses instead of configuring a local DHCP server at the remote site.
If you ever needed to hide multiple systems behind a single IP address you would use PAT. (Port Address Translation) besides using this to connect to the internet when using an RFC 1918 address, you can configure PAT for VPN connections. The benefit is the same, hide multiple systems behind a single IP address with the advantage being you can have many systems on one side of the VPN tunnel all using that single IP.