Security Connector 2.6.8 is now available for upgrade and functions as a DNS proxy (beta)

Depending on your configuration, Security Connector 2.6.8 now acts as a DNS proxy and a DNS sinkhole. When used as a DNS proxy, Security Connector is an internal DNS resolver that forwards traffic to Enterprise Threat Protector for resolution. With the DNS proxy, you identity the machine that’s making the request. The DNS proxy detects the internal client IP address and internal hostname.

DNS Proxy is currently in beta. To participate in the beta, contact your Akamai representative.

Security Connector 2.6.8 also includes fixes to DNS sinkhole functionality. These updates are available when you upgrade or deploy Security Connector.

For more information on DNS proxy, including setup and best practices, see the Security Connector Setup and Configuration Guide or the online help.

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) now includes these enhancements:

• Allow action for risky and file sharing domains. With the Allow action, traffic is directed to its destination unless ETP Client is deployed on the user’s machine. If ETP Client is set up for the full web proxy, traffic is directed to the proxy. This action is useful to organizations that want to forward some user traffic to ETP Proxy while still allowing other users to access content directly. 

• Updated user interface to manage a delegated or tenant administrator. If your organization uses the delegated or tenant access feature, a new user interface now makes it easier for ETP super administrators to find users who are assigned the delegated or tenant administrator role.

ETP Client 3.1.1 is now available

This release resolves issues in ETP Client. To support the client with ETP Proxy, you can now:

• Manually configure Mozilla Firefox to use system proxy settings. This process requires that you create a JSON file and distribute it across your organization.
• Configure an exemption in the Microsoft Edge browser to allow ETP Client connections.

For more information, see ETP Client Configuration Guide or the Enterprise Threat Protector online help.

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) now includes these features and enhancements:

• Proxy authorization. In an ETP policy, the new Proxy Authorization option allows ETP Proxy to authorize connections from the on-premises proxy in a proxy chaining configuration. Proxy credentials that you configure in ETP and in the on-premises proxy are used to authenticate traffic from the on-premises proxy. In ETP, you create these credentials on the Proxy Credentials tab of the Utilities page. You must then configure these same credentials in the on-premises proxy.

  Note: This feature is not available by default. To use this feature, contact your Akamai representative.

• ETP Proxy Certificate expiration. ETP now sends an email notification when the TLS man-in-the-middle (MITM) certificate you uploaded or generated for ETP Proxy is about to expire. An administrator that’s set to receive communication emails for system issues will now receive a reminder to update the certificate when it expires in 30 days or less.

• New name for ETP Client configuration setting. The Automatic security patch upgrade setting is now called Automatic Upgrades for Critical Patches. If you enable this setting, ETP automatically upgrades ETP Client to fix security vulnerabilities and major issues in ETP Client.

• New name for CDN Optimization policy setting. The CDN Optimization setting is now called Forward Public IP to Origin. This setting forwards the user’s public IP address to authoritative DNS servers and web servers, and it identifies the geolocation of clients. This setting applies to both DNS and HTTP traffic.

• PingOne available as an identity provider type. If your organization is licensed for ETP only, you can now create a PingOne identity provider (IdP). Previously, you could only add and manage a PingOne IdP if your organization was also licensed for Enterprise Application Access.

Enterprise Threat Protector Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is now available

You can configure ETP Proxy as a Secure Web Gateway (SWG) that performs URL filtering, anti-malware scanning, and applies acceptable use policies to each user. To do this, you’ll need to send all web traffic to ETP Proxy. 

The full web proxy is available with these features:

• Proxy chaining. Directs all HTTP and HTTPS traffic from your organization’s on-premises proxy to ETP Proxy. As part of this feature, you enable specific settings in a policy and configure your on-premises proxy to forward traffic to ETP.  This feature is currently in beta. For more information, contact your Akamai representative.
• ETP Client.  ETP Client 3.0.4 or later allows you to forward web traffic from user machines to ETP. You can configure ETP Client as a local web proxy on the user’s machine. The client also supports networks that split internal traffic from external web traffic and use an on-premises proxy. 

With the full web proxy, you can further use the following features to secure website access and prevent users from accessing malicious content: 

Authentication. You can define the users or user groups that can access websites in an acceptable use policy (AUP) after they authenticate. 

To implement authentication, you must also set up: 

• Identity providers. A service that creates, manages, and saves user and group identity information for authentication. You can create an identity provider in ETP or integrate Okta or a third-party SAML IdP. Supported third-party SAML IdPs include Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) and Microsoft Azure AD. In an identity provider (IdP) configuration, you can enable multi-factor authentication, define session settings, design the login page, and more.
  Note: If your organization is licensed for Enterprise Application Access (EAA), you can create a PingOne identity service. You can also use your existing IdP configuration in ETP. However, make sure that you use EAA to manage IdPs that were created in the EAA product. Do not modify these settings in the ETP UI to avoid conflicting configuration changes. 

• Directories. A service that your enterprise uses to manage users and user groups. You must associate a directory to an IdP. The following directory services are supported: 
  • Active Directory
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
    ETP also offers Cloud Directory, an internal Akamai directory that you can use for testing purposes only. 

• Identity connectors. An identity connector is a virtual appliance that you download from the Utilities page in ETP and deploy behind the firewall in your data centers or hybrid cloud environments. You associate an identity connector to a directory. It allows ETP to synchronize with your directory service.

To use these features for authentication, contact your Akamai representative.

Scan unclassified traffic. In a policy, you can define an action for unclassified domains. Unclassified domains do not appear in any ETP list, such as a threat category list, custom lists, or the acceptable use policy (AUP). If the Classify action is selected for unclassified traffic, ETP Proxy scans and analyzes domains. After this analysis is completed, the traffic is assigned a category and a corresponding policy action.

Static malware analysis for large files. Allows ETP to scan files that are 5 MB to 2 GB in size. ETP scans these files after they are downloaded. If ETP detects malware, a threat event is reported.  In the ETP threat event on the Event Analysis page, you can download a deep scan report in PDF format that includes more detailed information. To use this feature, in a policy, you must enable Inline Payload Analysis and select the Allow and Scan option for large files.

Dynamic malware analysis in a Sandbox environment. Scans files in a secure sandbox environment that’s isolated from your network. In this environment, files are executed and analyzed to determine whether malicious code or activity is detected. This feature:

• Analyzes files that are up to 64 MB in size.  
• Automatically scans files offline (after they are downloaded).
• Publishes a deep scan report in ETP when it detects a threat. You can download the report in PDF format from the corresponding event in ETP. 

To use this feature, in a policy, you must enable Inline Payload Analysis, select the Allow and Scan option for large files, and enable Dynamic Analysis. This feature is available to organizations that are licensed for Advanced Sandbox. 

ETP includes reports where you can view detailed information about traffic.

• DNS Activity. Shows data on DNS traffic that’s directed to ETP or ETP Proxy.  This report allows you to:
  • Investigate suspicious activity.
  • Review requests made to a specific domain.
  • Check activity from a specific client internal IP address or machine name.
  • Troubleshoot a failed request based on connection ID or client request ID.

• Proxy Summary. Includes the total number of proxy transactions and the top transactions based on policy action, autonomous system name, client port, destination IP, destination port, domain, geolocation, source IP address, and more.

• Proxy Activity.  Shows the traffic that’s directed to ETP Proxy. This report shows the requested domain, internal IP address of the user’s machine, the username of the user who made the request, the action that was applied to traffic, and more.

These reports are available to super administrators and users who are assigned a specific role permission.

 Known Issues

These issues are currently known in this release: 

1) Issue: When ETP Client is installed on machines, users cannot access the Internet when both these conditions apply:

• ETP Client 3.0.4 or later forwards all web traffic to ETP Proxy.
• Pulse Secure VPN uses proxy server settings.

Workaround: In the VPN  tunneling connection profile of Pulse Secure VPN, make sure you or an IT administrator selects the No proxy server option. For more information on Pulse Secure VPN connection profiles, see documentation for Pulse Secure VPN.

2) Issue: Universal Windows Platform apps downloaded from the Microsoft Windows store are not supported on machines where ETP Client is installed.
Workaround: No workaround is available.

3) Issue: If you upgrade ETP Client version 2.1.0 to version 3.0.4 or later, an upgrade notification incorrectly indicates that the client will upgrade to version 2.0.7.
Workaround: Continue with the upgrade process. ETP correctly upgrades the client to version 3.0.4 or later.

 4) Issue: ETP Proxy may block the domains or URLs to bot or web application firewall services.
Workaround. To make sure these services bypass ETP Proxy, add the domains to an exception list. Akamai is actively working to resolve this issue and add ETP Proxy support for these services. 

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) now includes these features and enhancements:

• Security patch upgrades for ETP Client. In an ETP Client configuration, you can select to automatically install security patch upgrades. Security patch upgrades address security vulnerabilities and apply changes that are necessary to support OS updates. If you don’t want to automatically install these updates, like a software upgrade, you can download a patch from ETP, test it, approve it, and select how you want to apply it across your network.

• Revoke ETP Client. If a user reports a lost or compromised device, you can revoke ETP Client on that device. This operation is available in ETP on the Reports tab for ETP Client.

• New policy tab name. The Akamai Security tab in a policy is now called Threat.

These features are now available to organizations that are participating in ETP beta:

• Unclassified traffic. An Unclassified Traffic setting is now available in a policy. A domain is considered unclassified if it does not appear in the AUP, a custom list, or in any threat list maintained by Akamai. As an ETP administrator, you can block this traffic or allow it to bypass ETP Proxy. If you are licensed for ETP Advanced Threat, you can select the Classify action to direct unclassified traffic to ETP Proxy. Depending on the type of proxy you use, this configuration is recommended:
  • For the selective proxy (forwards only risky web traffic), select Bypass.
  • For the full web proxy, select Classify.
    As a result of this enhancement, the Unclassified AUP category is no longer available.

• Enable Forward Proxy removed in policy. The Enable Forward Proxy toggle is no longer shown in a policy. This setting is automatically enabled in the backend when you turn on ETP Proxy.

• Origin Ports. In a policy, the new Origin Ports field allows you to enter the ports and ports ranges that you want to open for the full web proxy. By default, ETP allows connections to ports 80 to 84, 443, 4443, 8080, 8443, and 8888.

• Enable ETP Client as Proxy policy setting. The new Enable ETP Client as Proxy policy setting allows you to define whether the ETP Client machine is configured as a web proxy. If you choose to make ETP Client a local web proxy, web traffic is directed from the client to ETP Proxy. This setting functions the same as the Configure ETP Client as a local computer web proxy setting in the ETP Client configuration (Utilities > ETP Client > Configuration). Your selection for the Enable ETP Client as Proxy setting takes precedence over the ETP client configuration setting.

• Permission required to access Summary of Proxy Activity and DNS Activity reports. To access the Summary of Proxy Activity and DNS Activity reports, you must be an ETP super administrator or a user who’s assigned a role with the etpRestrictedPageViewRole permission.

• Proxy activity event reporting. If activity on the Proxy Activity report generated an event, the report now shows the Is Event field to indicate whether specific activity is also an event.

• Dashboard shows total number of HTTP and HTTPS activity. The ETP Dashboard now reports the total number of HTTP and HTTPS activity in a summary graph. When a user clicks the provided graph, they are directed to the Proxy Activity report.

• Update to configuring AUP exceptions. ETP now makes it easier for you to find and select the users and groups that can access a blocked category in an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). To select users, you can search for User IDs in the associated directory and in the search results, select the user. To select groups, you can search for groups and in a drop-down list, select the group.

  If you try to find a user or group that does not exist in the directory, you can add the user or group to the AUP exception. To allow these users and groups to authenticate, you must also add these users and groups to the directory.

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) Secure Web Gateway (SWG) now in beta

Features

ETP SWG performs URL filtering and anti-malware scanning on all web traffic. It’s available with any one of these features:

• Proxy chaining. Allows you to forward all web traffic from your existing on-premises proxy server to ETP.  You can enable this feature with the new Enable Forward Proxy and the Trust XFF Header policy settings. The proxy host information that you use to configure traffic forwarding from the on-premises proxy to ETP is shown in the ETP policy. 
• ETP Client 3.0.4. New version of the client that allows you to forward web traffic from user machines to ETP. You can configure ETP Client as a local web proxy on the user’s machine. The client also supports networks that split internal traffic from external web traffic and use an on-premises proxy. Depending on your ETP license, you can also configure ETP Client to forward only DNS and risky web traffic.

This beta also offers these features:

Authentication policy. An authentication policy defines the users or user groups that can access websites in an acceptable use policy (AUP) after they authenticate. You can require that users authenticate before accessing a website or you can make authentication optional.  If a user is authenticated, then all web requests are logged in the Proxy Activity report (Monitoring > Activity) with username, group information, and the machine IP address. If a user does not authenticate, the username and group information are not logged. To implement authentication, you must set up: 

• Identity providers. A service that creates, manages, and saves user and group identity information for authentication.  You can create an identity provider (IdP) or integrate a third-party IdP such as Okta, PingOne, and Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).  In an IdP configuration, you can enable multi-factor authentication, define sessions settings, design the login page, and more.

  Note: If your organization is licensed for Enterprise Application Access (EAA), you can use your existing IdP configuration in ETP. In this situation, make sure you manage the IdP configuration in EAA. Do not modify these settings in the ETP UI to avoid conflicting configuration changes.

• Directories. A service that your enterprise uses to manage users and user groups. You must associate a directory to an IdP. The following directory services are supported: 
  • Active Directory
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)

  ETP also offers Cloud Directory, an internal Akamai directory that you can use for testing purposes only. 

  The Identity Provider and Directory configuration pages in ETP are available from a new area of the navigation menu called Identity. 

• Identity connectors (Optional). If your directory service is located in a data center that’s not accessible from the Internet, you can deploy an identity connector to grant IdP access to the directory. An identity connector is a virtual appliance that you download from the Utilities page in ETP and deploy behind the firewall in your data centers or hybrid cloud environments.

Proxy Activity. New Proxy Activity tab on the Activity page reports traffic that’s directed to ETP Proxy. You can view data about traffic and events, including the username of the user who made the request, the internal IP address of the user’s machine, and the applied policy action.

DNS Activity. New DNS Activity tab on the Activity page reports DNS traffic that’s directed to ETP. You can view detailed data about traffic such as applied policy action and the internal client IP address. This tab allows administrators to investigate suspicious activity and review requests to a specific domain.

Static malware analysis for large files. Allows ETP to scan files that are 5 MB to 2 GB in size. ETP scans these files after they are downloaded. If ETP detects malware, a threat event is reported.  In the the ETP threat event on the Event Analysis page, you can download a deep scan report in PDF format that includes more detailed information. To use this feature, in a policy, you must enable Inline Payload Analysis and select the Allow and Scan option for large files.

Dynamic malware analysis with Sandbox. Scans files in a secure sandbox environment that’s isolated from your network. In this environment, files are executed and analyzed to determine whether malicious code or activity is detected. This feature:

• Analyzes files that are up to 64 MB in size.  
• Automatically scans files offline (after they are downloaded).
• Publishes a deep scan report in ETP when it detects a threat. You can download the report in PDF format from the corresponding event in ETP. 

To use this feature, in a policy, you must enable Inline Payload Analysis, select the Allow and Scan option for large files, and enable Dynamic Analysis. This feature is available to organizations that are licensed for Advanced Sandbox.  

To try any of these features, contact your Akamai representative. 

Known Issues and Limitations

These limitations apply to this beta release:

• Windows apps are not supported on Windows machines where ETP Client 3.0.4 is installed.
• If a user skips authentication, they are prompted to authenticate every 15 minutes. 
• ETP Client 3.0.4 is not supported on Mac OS X El Capitan.
• If you are setting up Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) as a third-party SAML identity provider, you must deploy an identity connector and associate it with AD.

These issues are currently known in this beta release: 

Authentication

Issue: When defining the users and groups that can access websites for a blocked AUP category, you must manually enter the user IDs and group names. You cannot provide the username of the user.
Workaround: If you are using a directory service such as Activity Directory, consult the user and group information in your directory service. You can also find the User ID and group name in a Proxy Activity report (Monitoring > Activity).

Identity Providers and Directories

1) Issue: If your organization uses Enterprise Application Access (EAA) or another cloud access solution for enterprise applications, these applications are not accessible when traffic is directed to ETP Proxy.
Workaround: Make sure you enter the domains of your enterprise applications and EAA identity providers in the internal DNS suffixes field of the ETP network configuration.

To do this:

1. In the ETP navigation menu, select Configuration > Utilities.
2. Click the Network Configuration tab.
3. In the DNS suffixes field, enter the full domain of EAA identity providers and enterprise applications.
4. Click Save.

2) Issue: The email address associated with a user in the Cloud Directory is not editable.
Workaround: You can delete the user and add a user with the new email address. If your organization also uses EAA, you can modify the user’s email address in EAA.

3) Issue: When deleting a user in the Cloud Directory, the dialog that confirms the deletion shows inaccurate information about the user’s last login.
Workaround: No workaround is available.   

4) Issue: If a user is deleted from a directory after they authenticate, the user is redirected to the IdP login page 30 minutes after the delete operation occurred.
Workaround: No workaround is available.

5) Issue: Changes to the URL of an identity server in ETP do not take effect for an identity provider that was previously deployed and assigned to a policy. After you deploy the modified identity provider, the change is not recognized by ETP policy.
Workaround: In the policy where this identity provider is assigned, complete these steps:

1. Change the authentication mode to another mode that uses authentication. For example, if this mode is set to Optional, select Require. If this mode is set to Require, select Optional.
2. Save and deploy the policy.
3. Return to the policy.
4. Select the authentication mode that you want to use for the policy.
5. Apply AUP exceptions.
6. Save and deploy the policy.

For detailed instructions on these operations, see the online help.

6) Issue: If you modify an identity provider, you cannot deploy any policy that’s associated with the IdP until the IdP is deployed.
Workaround: Deploy the IdP.

ETP Proxy

1) Issue: A browser error appears to the user when ETP Proxy cannot verify the web server certificate. This occurs if the certificate chain is incomplete or its Certificate Authority (CA) is unknown to Akamai.
Workaround: If users see this error for traffic or websites that you want to allow, add the domain or its IP address to an exception list. Exception lists bypass ETP Proxy. For more information on exception lists, see Exception lists. To create an exception list, see Create an exception list.

2) Issue: Mozilla Firefox on Windows does not use the proxy settings or certificates that are on the system.
Workaround: If you configure proxy chaining to direct traffic to ETP Proxy, make sure you configure the on-premises proxy as a proxy connection in the Firefox browser.  To configure proxy settings in Firefox:

1. Click the Open menu button and select Options. 
2. Navigate to Network Settings and click Settings.
3. In the Connection Settings, select Use system proxy settings.
4. Click OK.

Note: On Windows, make sure that you configure Firefox to recognize the trusted root certificates that are in your enterprise Windows certificate store. For more information, see Enable enterprise trusted root certificate in Firefox and Certificate distribution. 

 ETP Client

1) Issue: Users cannot access the Internet when both these conditions apply:

• ETP Client 3.0.4 forwards all web traffic to ETP Proxy
• Pulse Secure VPN uses proxy server settings
  Workaround: In the VPN  tunneling connection profile of Pulse Secure VPN, make sure you or an IT administrator selects the No proxy server option. For more information on Pulse Secure VPN connection profiles, see documentation for Pulse Secure VPN.

2) Issue: If there are more than 40 DNS suffixes configured in the ETP network configuration, ETP Client may be unable to enter “Your device is protected” mode.
Workaround: Instead of adding these domains or DNS suffixes to an ETP network configuration, create a custom exception list with this data. Exception lists bypass ETP Proxy. For more information on exception lists, see Exception lists. To create an exception list, see Create an exception list.

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) now includes these enhancements:

Deploy custom lists in less than 30 seconds. Like other configuration settings in ETP, you can now deploy custom lists in less than 30 seconds.

Migrate quick lists to custom lists. Quick lists are now discontinued. If you configured an Allow or a Deny quick list, you can migrate this data to custom lists. On the Quick Lists page (Configuration > Quick Lists), click the Migrate Quick Lists button to migrate your quick list data to an Allow custom list and a Deny custom list. Migrated quick lists are added to all policies, allowing you to manage these lists as part of a policy configuration. By default, the migrated Allow list is granted the bypass policy action, while the migrated Deny list is assigned the block policy action.

After migrating quick lists, make sure you deploy all pending changes. Once the migration is complete, the Quick List page is no longer available at your next login.

Note: If your organization never configured quick lists, no action is needed. In this case, the Quick Lists page is no longer available from the navigation menu.

Enterprise Threat Protector (ETP) now includes these features and enhancements:

• Associate locations to a scheduled report configuration. You can now configure a scheduled report to show events based on a location or multiple locations. By default, scheduled reports are configured to show events based on all locations.
• View data and configuration settings available to a tenant administrator. If an ETP super administrator assigns the tenant administrator role, a Filter data by tenant administrator field now allows you to view data and settings available to a tenant administrator. After you specify a tenant administrator in the field and navigate ETP, the filter shows configuration settings and event data based on the locations, policies, and lists the tenant administrator can manage.
• New tab names on the Activity page. The DNS tab is now called the DNS Summary tab, and the Proxy tab is now called the Proxy Summary tab.

Filter events and indicator search results by a specific time

In addition to selecting a specific date or date range, the calendar filter that appears on the Dashboard, Events, Activity, and Indicator Search pages now allows you to specify a start and end time in a 24-hour clock format. This enhancement filters data to show events and domain history changes that occurred within the specified time.