Forum Discussion

2funky_105078's avatar
Sep 12, 2016

ASM - creating a policy "without-QA" or "manually", whats the difference?

Reading this nice ASM operation guide, i have a doubt:

 

Whats the difference between creaing a policy "Without-QA" (Page 22) and "Manually" (page 28)?

 

in both cases, there is no QA and the ASM user needs to review anyway all the elements to be added to the policy. The first case is done in Blocking mode and the second in Transparent mode, but anyways there is 7 days staging/learnig period in Blocking mode, so its the same.

 

Shall we use Manually/Transparent when we dont know at all the application behaviour? Anyways in this case there could be blocked requests due to other reasons, so i dont see much added value compared to using Blocking mode with 7 days staging.

 

Thanks in advance for your clarification on these 2 approaches..

 

2 Replies

  • The main difference is that on page 22 the recommendation is to use Automatic Policy Builder, which starts out with the policy in blocking mode, but leaves violations in staging, in order to prevent legal requests from being blocked. "Automatic" in this context means that ASM will move entities (file types, URLs, parameters) out of staging (referred to as "enforced") when the default 7-day period has elapsed, and no violations have been detected. With that in mind, "Manually" in this context means that nothing will happen automatically. When there is a violation, the administrator must review it, and then decide how to handle it. For example, let's say you have an 10 attack signatures in staging. On day 5, one of them gets triggered. In manual mode, you would have to examine the request that triggered that signature and decide whether or not that signature should be enforced. On day 7, you would see suggestions that the 9 signatures which were not triggered are ready to be enforced. The one that was triggered would not be ready to be enforced. In Automatic mode, the nine signatures that were not triggered would be enforced, and the one that was would stay in staging until 7 more days elapse without any more violations. The relationship between "staging" and "blocking mode" is simple: Any entity that is in staging will never cause a blocked request, even if a violation is triggered. If you are familiar with the protected app, or you can discuss it with someone who is, then your job is much easier. Otherwise, the recommendation is to allow ASM to do the work for you. Make sense?

     

  • Thanks both of you.

     

    So the main take-away concept here is that in Automatic mode a Signature which has not been trigered will be enforced automatically after the 7 day, right?

     

    But this applies only to signatures and not to "URLs/FileTypes/Cookies" learnt in the policy?

     

    This is new for me as i thought that nothing is enforced automatically....