ICS515: ICS Active Defense and Incident Response will help you deconstruct industrial control system cyber attacks, leverage an active defense to identify and counter threats in your ICS, and use incident response procedures to maintain the safety and reliability of operations.
ICS515: ICS Active Defense and Incident Response will help you deconstruct industrial control system (ICS) cyber attacks, leverage an active defense to identify and counter threats to your ICS, and use incident response procedures to maintain the safety and reliability of operations.
The course will empower students to understand their networked ICS environment, monitor it for threats, perform incident response against identified threats, and learn from interactions with the adversary to enhance network security. This process of monitoring, responding to, and learning from threats internal to the network is known as active defense, which is needed to counter advanced adversaries targeting ICS, as has been seen with malware such as STUXNET, HAVEX, CRASHOVERRIDE, and TRISIS. Students can expect to come out of this course with the ability to deconstruct targeted ICS attacks and fight these adversaries and others.
The course uses a hands-on approach and real-world malware to break down cyber attacks on ICS from start to finish. Students will gain a practical and technical understanding of leveraging active defense concepts such as using threat intelligence, performing network security monitoring, and utilizing threat analysis and incident response to ensure the safety and reliability of operations. The strategic and technical skills presented in this course serve as a basis for ICS organizations looking to show that defense is do-able.
You Will Learn:
Industrial control system (ICS) security professionals must be able to leverage internal and external threat intelligence to critically analyze threats, extract indicators of compromise (IOCs), document tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and guide security teams to find threats in the environment. On this first course day students will learn how threat intelligence is generated, how to critically analyze reports, and the basic tenets of active defense functions. Students will become better analysts and critical thinkers by learning skills useful in day-to-day operations, regardless of their jobs and roles. This day features five hands-on labs that include building a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), identifying information available about assets online through Shodan, completing an analysis of competing hypotheses, visualizing the attack space, and ingesting threat intelligence reports to guide their practices over the rest of the labs in the course.
Understanding the networked environment is the only way to fully defend it: you cannot defend what you do not know. This course section will teach students to use tools such as Wireshark, TCPdump, CyberLens, ELSA, Bro, and Snort to map their ICS network, collect data, detect threats, and analyze threats to drive incident response procedures. During this section, students will be introduced to the lab network and an advanced persistent threat (APT) that is present on it. Drawing on threat intelligence from the previous course section, students will have to discover, identify, and analyze the threat using their new active defense skills to guide incident responders to the affected Human Machine Interface (HMI).
The ability to prepare for and perform ICS incident response is vital to the safety and reliability of control systems. ICS incident response is a core concept of ICS active defense and requires that analysts safely acquire digital evidence while scoping the environment for threats and their impact on operations. ICS incident response is a young field with many challenges, but during this section students will learn effective tactics and tools to collect and preserve forensic-quality data. Students will then use these data to perform timely forensic analysis and create IOCs. In the previous section's labs, APT malware was identified in the network. In this section, the labs will focus on identifying which system is impacted and gathering a sample of the threat that can be analyzed.
Understanding the threat is key to discovering its capabilities and its potential to affect the ICS. The information extracted from threats through processes such as malware analysis is also critical to being able to make the necessary changes to the environment to reduce the effectiveness of the threat. The information obtained is vital to an ICS active defense, which requires internal data collection to create and share threat intelligence. In this section, students will learn how to analyze initial attack vectors such as spearphishing emails, perform timely malware analysis techniques, analyze memory images, and create Indicators of Compromise in YARA. The previous section's labs identified the infected HMI and gathered a sample of the APT malware. In this section's labs, students will analyze the malware, extract information, and develop YARA rules to complete the active defense model introduced in the class and maintain operations.
This section focuses on reinforcing the strategy, methodologies, skillsets, and tools introduced in the first four sections of the course. This entirely hands-on section will present students with two different scenarios. The first involves data collected from an intrusion into SANS Cyber City. The second involves data collected from a Distributed Control System (DCS) infected with malware. This section will truly challenge students to utilize their ICS active defense and incident response skills and test themselves.
Scenario One
The first half of the day will introduce packet captures and system images from an intrusion into SANS Cyber City. Students will leverage their active defense skills to identify and respond.
Scenario Two
The second half of the day will introduce packet captures and system images from an intrusion into a DCS environment. Students will again leverage their active defense skills to identify and respond to real-world malware and understand the impact on the environment.
The GRID certification is for professionals who want to demonstrate that they can perform Active Defense strategies specific to and appropriate for an Industrial Control System (ICS) network and systems. Candidates are required to demonstrate an understanding of the Active Defense approach, ICS-specific attacks and how these attacks inform mitigation strategies. Candidates must also show an understanding of the strategies and fundamental techniques specific to core subjects with an ICS-focus such as network security monitoring (NSM), digital forensics and incident response (DFIR).
Active Defense Concepts and Application, Detection and Analysis in an ICS environment
Discovery and Monitoring in an ICS environment, ICS-focused Digital Forensics, and ICS-focused Incident Response
Malware Analysis Techniques, Threat Analysis in an ICS environment, and Threat Intelligence Fundamentals
Students from either an IT or ICS background will do well in this course. Prior to attending the course, it is recommended that you attend SANS ICS410 or equivalent essential cybersecurity classes such as SEC401, or that you have fundamental cybersecurity experience. Students do not need previous ICS experience, but they should be comfortable with ICS terminology and systems such as SCADA, DCS, PLCs, and RTUs, and have an understanding of distinct risks and mitigation approaches in OT environments.
NOTE: It is critical that students have administrator access to the operating system and all security software installed. Changes may need to be made to personal firewalls and other host-based software in order for the labs to work.
Your course media will now be delivered via download. The media files for class can be large, some in the 40 - 50 GB range. You need to allow plenty of time for the download to complete. Internet connections and speed vary greatly and are dependent on many different factors. Therefore, it is not possible to give an estimate of the length of time it will take to download your materials. Please start your course media downloads as you get the link. You will need your course media immediately on the first day of class. Waiting until the night before the class starts to begin your download has a high probability of failure.
SANS has begun providing printed materials in PDF form. Additionally, certain classes are using an electronic workbook in addition to the PDFs. The number of classes using eWorkbooks will grow quickly. In this new environment, we have found that a second monitor and/or a tablet device can be useful by keeping the class materials visible while the instructor is presenting or while you are working on lab exercises.
"This class was developed from my experiences in the U.S. intelligence community and within the control system community dealing with advanced adversaries targeting industrial control systems. It is the class I wish I would have had available to me while protecting infrastructure against these adversaries. It is exactly what you'll need to maintain secure and reliable operations in the face of determined threats. ICS515 will empower you to prove that defense is do-able."
- Robert M. Lee
