Policy Management

The following topics describe how to manage various policies on the Firepower Management Center:

Policy Deployment

After you configure your deployment, and any time you change that configuration, you must deploy the changes to affected devices. You can view deployment status in the Message Center.

Deploying updates the following components:

Device and interface configurations
Device-related policies: NAT, VPN, QoS, platform settings
Access control and related policies: DNS, file, identity, intrusion, network analysis, prefilter, SSL
Network discovery policy
Intrusion rule updates
Configurations and objects associated with any of these elements

You can configure the system to deploy automatically by scheduling a deploy task or by setting the system to deploy when importing intrusion rule updates. Automating policy deployment is especially useful if you allow intrusion rule updates to modify system-provided base policies for intrusion and network analysis. Intrusion rule updates can also modify default values for the advanced preprocessing and performance options in your access control policies.

In a multidomain deployment, you can deploy changes for any domain where your user account belongs:

Switch to an ancestor domain to deploy changes to all subdomains at the same time.
Switch to a leaf domain to deploy changes to only that domain.

Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes

The following are guidelines for deploying configuration changes.

Inline vs Passive Deployments

Do not apply inline configurations to devices deployed passively, and vice versa.

Time to Deploy and Memory Limitations

The time it takes to deploy depends on multiple factors, including (but not limited to):

The configurations you send to the device. For example, if you dramatically increase the number of Security Intelligence entries you block, deploy can take longer.
Device model and memory. On lower-memory devices, deploying can take longer. For example, it can take up to five minutes to deploy to a Firepower 7010, 7020, or 7030 device.

Do not exceed the capability of your devices. If you exceed the maximum number of rules or policies supported by a target device, the system displays a warning. The maximum depends on a number of factors—not only memory and the number of processors on the device, but also on policy and rule complexity. For information on optimizing policies and rules, see Best Practices for Access Control Rules.

Interruptions to Traffic Flow and Inspection During Deploy

When you deploy, resource demands may result in a small number of packets dropping without inspection. Additionally, deploying some configurations restarts the Snort process, which interrupts traffic inspection. Whether traffic drops during this interruption or passes without further inspection depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort® Restart Traffic Behavior and Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated.

Caution

We strongly recommend you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when interruptions will have the least impact.

Auto-Enabling Application Detectors

If you are performing application control but disable required detectors, the system automatically enables the appropriate system-provided detectors upon policy deploy. If none exist, the system enables the most recently modified user-defined detector for the application.

Asset Rediscovery with Network Discovery Policy Changes

When you deploy changes to a network discovery policy, the system deletes and then rediscovers MAC address, TTL, and hops information from the network map for the hosts in your monitored networks. Also, the affected managed devices discard any discovery data that has not yet been sent to the Firepower Management Center.

Deploy Configuration Changes


Smart License	Classic License	Supported Devices	Supported Domains	Access
Any	Any	Any	Any	Admin/Network Admin/Security Approver

After you change configurations, deploy them to the affected devices. We strongly recommend that you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when any interruptions to traffic flow and inspection will have the least impact.

Caution

Before you begin

Review the guidelines described in Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes.
Be sure all managed devices use the same revision of the Security Zones object. If you have edited security zone objects: Do not deploy configuration changes to any device until you edit the zone setting for interfaces on all devices you want to sync. You must deploy to all managed devices at the same time. See Synchronizing Security Zone Object Revisions.

Procedure

Step 1	On the Firepower Management Center menu bar, click Deploy. The Deploy Policies dialog lists devices with out-of-date configurations. The Version at the top of the dialog specifies when you last made configuration changes. The Current Version column in the device table specifies when you last deployed changes to each device.
Step 2	Identify and choose the devices where you want to deploy configuration changes. Sort—Sort the device list by clicking a column heading. Expand—Click plus () to expand a device listing to view the configuration changes to be deployed. The system marks out-of-date policies with an index (). Filter—Filter the device list. Click the arrow in the upper-right corner of any column heading in the display, enter text in the Filters text box, and press Enter. Check or uncheck the check box to activate or deactivate the filter. Arrange—Place the mouse on a column heading to drag and drop the column in your preferred order.
Step 3	Click Deploy.
Step 4	If the system identifies errors or warnings in the changes to be deployed, it displays them in the Errors and Warnings for Requested Deployment window. You have the following choices: Proceed—Continue deploying without resolving warning conditions. You cannot proceed if the system identifies errors. Cancel—Exit without deploying. Resolve the error and warning conditions, and attempt to deploy the configuration again.

What to do next

(Optional) Monitor deployment status; see Viewing Deployment Messages.
If deploy fails, see Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes.

Redeploy Existing Configurations to a Device


Smart License	Classic License	Supported Devices	Supported Domains	Access
Any	Any	Any	Leaf only	Admin/Network Admin/Security Approver

You can force-deploy existing (unchanged) configurations to a single managed device. We strongly recommend you deploy in a maintenance window or at a time when any interruptions to traffic flow and inspection will have the least impact.

Caution

Before you begin

Review the guidelines described in Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes.

Procedure

Step 1	Choose Devices > Device Management.
Step 2	Click edit () next to the device where you want to force deployment. In a multidomain deployment, if you are not in a leaf domain, the system prompts you to switch.
Step 3	Click Device.
Step 4	Click edit () next to the General section heading.
Step 5	Click Force Deploy ().
Step 6	Click Deploy. The system identifies any errors or warnings with the configurations you are deploying. You can click Proceed to continue without resolving warning conditions. However, you cannot proceed if the system identifies an error.

What to do next

(Optional) Monitor deployment status; see Viewing Deployment Messages.
If deploy fails, see Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes.

Snort® Restart Scenarios

When the traffic inspection engine referred to as the Snort process on a managed device restarts, inspection is interrupted until the process resumes. Whether traffic drops during this interruption or passes without further inspection depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort® Restart Traffic Behavior for more information. Additionally, resource demands may result in a small number of packets dropping without inspection when you deploy, regardless of whether the Snort process restarts.

Any of the scenarios in the following table cause the Snort process to restart.

Table 1. Snort Restart Scenarios
Restart Scenario	More Information
Deploying a specific configuration that requires the Snort process to restart.	Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated
Modifying a configuration that immediately restarts the Snort process.	Changes that Immediately Restart the Snort Process
Traffic-activation of the currently deployed Automatic Application Bypass (AAB) configuration.	Configuring Automatic Application Bypass

Inspect Traffic During Policy Apply

Inspect traffic during policy apply is an advanced access control policy general setting that allows managed devices to inspect traffic while deploying configuration changes; this is the case unless a configuration that you deploy requires the Snort process to restart. You can configure this option as follows:

Enabled — Traffic is inspected during the deployment unless certain configurations require the Snort process to restart.

When the configurations you deploy do not require a Snort restart, the system initially uses the currently deployed access control policy to inspect traffic, and switches during deployment to the access control policy you are deploying.
Disabled — Traffic is not inspected during the deployment. The Snort process always restarts when you deploy.

The following graphic illustrates how Snort restarts can occur when you enable or disable Inspect traffic during policy apply.

Caution

Snort® Restart Traffic Behavior

The following tables explain how different devices handle traffic when the Snort process restarts.

Table 2. FTD and FTD Virtual Restart Traffic Effects
Interface Configuration	Restart Traffic Behavior
inline: Snort Fail Open: Down: enabled	passed without inspection
inline: Snort Fail Open: Down: disabled	dropped
routed, transparent (including EtherChannel, redundant, subinterface) Note that Version 6.2.2 does not support the CLI command configure snort preserve-connection {enable \| disable} , which, when enabled (the default), allowed existing TCP/UDP connections to pass without inspection. As of Version 6.2.2, packets are dropped unless both the FMC and FTD are running Version 6.2.0.2 or a subsequent 6.2.0.x patch. For more information, see Cisco Firepower Threat Defense Command Reference.	dropped
inline: tap mode	egress packet immediately, copy bypasses Snort
passive	uninterrupted, not inspected

Table 3. 7000 and 8000, NGIPSv Restart Traffic Effects
Interface Configuration	Restart Traffic Behavior
inline: Failsafe enabled or disabled	passed without inspection A few packets might drop if Failsafe is disabled and Snort is busy but not down.
inline: tap mode	egress packet immediately, copy bypasses Snort
passive	uninterrupted, not inspected
routed, switched (7000 and 8000 Series only)	dropped

Table 4. ASA FirePOWER Restart Traffic Effects
Interface Configuration	Restart Traffic Behavior
routed or transparent with fail-open	passed without inspection
routed or transparent with fail-close	dropped

Note

In addition to traffic handling when the Snort process is down while it restarts, traffic can also pass without inspection or drop when the Snort process is busy, depending on the configuration of the Failsafe option (see Inline Sets on the Firepower System) or the Snort Fail Open Busy option (see Configure an Inline Set). A device supports either the Failsafe option or the Snort Fail Open option, but not both.

Note

When the Snort process is busy but not down during configuration deployment, some packets may drop on routed, switched, or transparent interfaces if the total CPU load exceeds 50 percent.

Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated

Deploying any of the following configurations except AAB restarts the Snort process as described. Deploying AAB does not cause a restart, but excessive packet latency activates the currently deployed AAB configuration, causing a partial restart of the Snort process.

Access Control Policy Advanced Settings

Deploy when Inspect Traffic During Policy Apply is disabled.
Add or remove an SSL policy.

Security Intelligence

Add or delete multiple Security Intelligence whitelist or blacklist networks or network objects. Changes can be to custom or system-provided lists, and whether the Snort process restarts can vary by device, depending on the memory available for inspection.

File Policy

Deploy the first or last of any one of the following configurations; note that while otherwise deploying these file policy configurations does not cause a restart, deploying non-file-policy configurations can cause restarts.

Enable or disable Inspect Archives.
Take either of the following actions:
- Enable or disable Inspect Archives when the deployed access control policy includes at least one file policy.
- Add the first or remove the last file policy rule when Inspect Archives is enabled (note that at least one rule is required for Inspect Archives to be meaningful).
Enable or disable Store files in a Detect Files or Block Files rule.
Add the first or remove the last active file rule that combines the Malware Cloud Lookup or Block Malware rule action with an analysis option (Spero Analysis or MSEXE, Dynamic Analysis, or Local Malware Analysis) or a store files option (Malware, Unknown, Clean, or Custom).

Note that access control rules that deploy these file policy configurations to security zones or tunnel zones cause a restart only when your configuration meets the following conditions:

Source or destination security zones in your access control rule must match the security zones associated with interfaces on the target devices.
Unless the destination zone in you access control rule is any, a source tunnel zone in the rule must match a tunnel zone assigned to a tunnel rule in the prefilter policy.

Identity Policy

When SSL decryption is disabled (that is, when the access control policy does not include an SSL policy), add the first or remove the last active authentication rule.

An active authentication rule has either an Active Authentication rule action, or a Passive Authentication rule action with Use active authentication if passive or VPN identity cannot be established selected.

Network Discovery

Enable or disable non-authoritative, traffic-based user detection over the HTTP, FTP, or MDNS protocols, using the network discovery policy.

Device Management

Routing: Add a routed interface pair or virtual router to a 7000 or 8000 Series device.

VPN: Add or remove a VPN on a 7000 or 8000 Series device.

Caution

The system does not warn you that the Snort process restarts when you add or remove a VPN on a 7000 or 8000 Series device.

MTU: Change the highest MTU value among all non-management interfaces on a device.
7000/8000 series high availability: Change a high-availability state sharing option. The system does not warn you that the Snort process restarts on the primary and secondary devices.
Automatic Application Bypass (AAB): The currently deployed AAB configuration activates when a malfunction of the Snort process or a device misconfiguration causes a single packet to use an excessive amount of processing time. The result is a partial restart of the Snort process to alleviate extremely high latency or prevent a complete traffic stall. This partial restart causes a few packets to pass without inspection, or drop, depending on how the device handles traffic.

Updates

System update: Deploy configurations the first time after a software update that includes a new version of the Snort binary or data acquisition library (DAQ).
VDB: Deploy configurations the first time after installing a vulnerability database (VDB) .

Intrusion rule update: Deploying configurations the first time after importing an intrusion rule update (also known as a Snort Rule Update or SRU) that includes a new or modified shared object rule.

Caution

Intrusion rule updates are cumulative. Any shared object rule that is added or modified since your last update causes a restart when you deploy, even if the current update has no shared object rule changes.

Changes that Immediately Restart the Snort Process

The following changes immediately restart the Snort process without going through the deploy process. How the restart affects traffic depends on how the target device handles traffic. See Snort® Restart Traffic Behavior for more information.

Take any of the following actions involving applications or application detectors:
- Activate or deactivate a system or custom application detector.
- Delete an activated custom detector.
- Save and Reactivate an activated custom detector.
- Create a user-defined application.
A message warns you that continuing restarts the Snort process on all managed devices, and allows you to cancel.
Create or break a Firepower Threat Defense high availability pair—A message warns you that continuing to create a high availability pair restarts the Snort process on the primary and secondary devices and allows you to cancel.
Install a vulnerability database (VDB) update.
Restart the Snort process in the 7000 or 8000 Series user interface (System > Configuration > Process)—The system prompts you for confirmation and allows you to cancel.

Policy Comparison

To review policy changes for compliance with your organization's standards or to optimize system performance, you can examine the differences between two policies or between a saved policy and the running configuration.

You can compare the following policy types:

DNS
File
Health
Identity
Intrusion
Network Analysis
SSL

The comparison view displays both policies in a side-by-side format. Differences between the two policies are highlighted:

Blue indicates that the highlighted setting is different in the two policies, and the difference is noted in red text.
Green indicates that the highlighted setting appears in one policy but not the other.

Comparing Policies


Smart License	Classic License	Supported Devices	Supported Domains	Access
feature dependent	feature dependent	Any	feature dependent	feature dependent

Procedure

Step 1

Access the management page for the policy you want to compare:

DNS—Policies > Access Control > DNS
File—Policies > Access Control > Malware & File
Health—System > Health > Policy
Identity—Policies > Access Control > Identity
Intrusion—Policies > Access Control > Intrusion

Network Analysis—Policies > Access Control, then click Network Analysis Policy or Policies > Access Control > Intrusion, then click Network Analysis Policy

Note

If your custom user role limits access to the first path listed here, use the second path to access the policy.

SSL—Policies > Access Control > SSL

Step 2

Click Compare Policies.

Step 3

From the Compare Against drop-down list, choose the type of comparison you want to make:

To compare two different policies, choose Other Policy.
To compare two revisions of the same policy, choose Other Revision.
To compare another policy to the currently active policy, choose Running Configuration.

Step 4

Depending on the comparison type you choose, you have the following choices:

If you are comparing two different policies, choose the policies you want to compare from the Policy A and Policy B drop-down lists.
If you are comparing the running configuration to another policy, choose the second policy from the Policy B drop-down list.

Step 5

Click OK.

Step 6

Review the comparison results:

Comparison Viewer—To use the comparison viewer to navigate individually through policy differences, click Previous or Next above the title bar.
Comparison Report—To generate a PDF report that lists the differences between the two policies, click Comparison Report.

Policy Reports

For most policies, you can generate two kinds of reports. A report on a single policy provides details on the policy's current saved configuration, while a comparison report lists only the differences between two policies. You can generate a single-policy report for all policy types except health.

Note

Intrusion policy reports combine the settings in the base policy with the settings of the policy layers, and make no distinction between which settings originated in the base policy or policy layer.

Generating Current Policy Reports


Smart License	Classic License	Supported Devices	Supported Domains	Access
feature dependent	feature dependent	Any	feature dependent	feature dependent

Procedure

Step 1

Access the management page for the policy for which you want to generate a report:

Access Control—Policies > Access Control
DNS—Policies > Access Control > DNS
File—Policies > Access Control > Malware & File
Health—System > Health > Policy
Identity—Policies > Access Control > Identity
Intrusion—Policies > Access Control > Intrusion
NAT for 7000 & 8000 Series devices—Devices > NAT

Network Analysis—Policies > Access Control, then click Network Analysis Policy or Policies > Access Control > Intrusion, then click Network Analysis Policy

Note

If your custom user role limits access to the first path listed here, use the second path to access the policy.

SSL—Policies > Access Control > SSL

Step 2

Click report () next to the policy for which you want to generate a report.

Out-of-Date Policies

The Firepower System marks out-of-date policies with red status text that indicates how many of its targeted devices need a policy update. To clear this status, you must re-deploy the policy to the devices.

Configuration changes that require a policy re-deploy include:

Modifying an access control policy: any changes to access control rules, the default action, policy targets, Security Intelligence filtering, advanced options including preprocessing, and so on.
Modifying any of the policies that the access control policy invokes: the SSL policy, network analysis policies, intrusion policies, file policies, identity policies, or DNS policies.
Changing any reusable object or configuration used in an access control policy or policies it invokes:
- network, port, VLAN tag, URL, and geolocation objects
- Security Intelligence lists and feeds
- application filters or detectors
- intrusion policy variable sets
- file lists
- decryption-related objects and security zones
Updating the system software, intrusion rules, or the vulnerability database (VDB).

Keep in mind that you can change some of these configurations from multiple places in the web interface. For example, you can modify security zones using the object manager (Objects > Object Management), but modifying an interface type in a device’s configuration (Devices > Device Management) can also change a zone and require a policy re-deploy.

Note that the following updates do not require policy re-deploy:

automatic updates to Security Intelligence feeds and additions to the Security Intelligence global blacklist or whitelist using the context menu
automatic updates to URL filtering data
scheduled geolocation database (GeoDB) updates

Performance Considerations for Limited Deployments

Host, application, and user discovery data allow the system to create a complete, up-to-the-minute profile of your network. The system can also act as an intrusion detection and prevention system (IPS), analyzing network traffic for intrusions and exploits and, optionally, dropping offending packets.

Combining discovery and IPS gives context to your network activity and allows you to take advantage of many features, including:

impact flags and indications of compromise, which can tell you which of your hosts are vulnerable to a particular exploit, attack, or piece of malware
adaptive profile updates and Firepower recommendations, which allow you to examine traffic differently depending on the destination host
correlation, which allows you to respond to intrusions (and other events) differently depending on the affected host

However, if your organization is interested in performing only IPS, or only discovery, there are a few configurations that can optimize the performance of the system.

Discovery Without Intrusion Prevention

The discovery feature allows you to monitor network traffic and determine the number and types of hosts (including network devices) on your network, as well as the operating systems, active applications, and open ports on those hosts. You can also configure managed devices to monitor user activity on your network. You can use discovery data to perform traffic profiling, assess network compliance, and respond to policy violations.

In a basic deployment (discovery and simple, network-based access control only), you can improve a device’s performance by following a few important guidelines when configuring its access control policy.

Note

You must use an access control policy, even if it simply allows all traffic. The network discovery policy can only examine traffic that the access control policy allows to pass.

First, make sure your access control policy does not require complex processing and uses only simple, network-based criteria to handle network traffic. You must implement all of the following guidelines; misconfiguring any one of these options eliminates the performance benefit:

Do not use the Security Intelligence feature. Remove any populated global whitelist or blacklist from the policy’s Security Intelligence configuration.
Do not include access control rules with Monitor or Interactive Block actions. Use only Allow, Trust, and Block rules. Keep in mind that allowed traffic can be inspected by discovery; trusted and blocked traffic cannot.
Do not include access control rules with application, user, URL, ISE attribute, or geolocation-based network conditions. Use only simple network-based conditions: zone, IP address, VLAN tag, and port.
Do not include access control rules that perform file, malware, or intrusion inspection. In other words, do not associate a file policy or intrusion policy with any access control rule.
In the Advanced settings for the access control policy, make sure that Intrusion Policy used before Access Control rule is determined is set to No Rules Active.
Select Network Discovery Only as the policy’s default action. Do not choose a default action for the policy that performs intrusion inspection.

In conjunction with the access control policy, you can configure and deploy the network discovery policy, which specifies the network segments, ports, and zones that the system examines for discovery data, as well as whether hosts, applications, and users are discovered on the segments, ports, and zones.

Intrusion Prevention Without Discovery

Disabling discovery if you don't need it (for example, in an IPS-only deployment) can improve performance. To disable discovery you must implement all of these changes:

Delete all rules from your network discovery policy.
Use only simple network-based conditions to perform access control: zone, IP address, VLAN tag, and port.

Do not perform any kind of, application, user, URL, or geolocation control. Although you can disable storage of discovery data, the system still must collect and examine it to implement those features.

After you deploy, new discovery halts on target devices. The system gradually deletes information in the network map according to your timeout preferences. Or, you can purge all discovery data immediately.

History for Policy Management


Feature	Version	Details
Revamp of the deploy section in the Firepower Management Center.	6.6	The Deploy button on the FMC menu bar is changed to Deploy menu. There are two new sub-menu options under it. These are Deployment and Deployment History. The Deployment page has undergone an improvement along with newly added features, and the new Deployment History page provides a legend of all the previous deployments. The Deployment page has the following newly added features: Deployment status - On the Deployment page, the Status column provides the deployment status for each device. Deployment estimate - The Estimate link is available on the Deployment page after you select a device, a policy, or a configuration. The Estimate link provides an estimate of the deployment duration once clicked. Deployment preview - Preview provides a snapshot of all the policy and object changes to be deployed on the device. The policy changes include the new policies, changes in the existing policies, and the deleted policies. The object changes include the added and modified objects which are used in policies. Selective policy deployment - FMC allows you to select a specific policy within the list of all the changes on the device that are due for deployment and deploy only the selected policy. Supported platforms: Firepower Management Center

Firepower Management Center Configuration Guide, Version 6.2.2

Results

Chapter: Policy Management

Policy Management

Policy Deployment

Best Practices for Deploying Configuration Changes

Inline vs Passive Deployments

Time to Deploy and Memory Limitations

Interruptions to Traffic Flow and Inspection During Deploy

Auto-Enabling Application Detectors

Asset Rediscovery with Network Discovery Policy Changes

Deploy Configuration Changes

Before you begin

Procedure

What to do next

Redeploy Existing Configurations to a Device

Before you begin

Procedure

What to do next

Snort® Restart Scenarios

Inspect Traffic During Policy Apply

Snort® Restart Traffic Behavior

Configurations that Restart the Snort Process When Deployed or Activated

Access Control Policy Advanced Settings

Security Intelligence

File Policy

Identity Policy

Network Discovery

Device Management

Updates

Changes that Immediately Restart the Snort Process

Policy Comparison

Comparing Policies

Procedure

Policy Reports

Generating Current Policy Reports

Procedure

Out-of-Date Policies

Performance Considerations for Limited Deployments

Discovery Without Intrusion Prevention

Intrusion Prevention Without Discovery

History for Policy Management

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