Device-ID Overview
Learn about Device-ID.
| Where Can I Use This? | What Do I Need? |
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According to the
2020 Unit 42 IoT Threat Report, 30% of all
network-connected devices in an average enterprise are IoT. This presents a growing
area of risk with many possibilities for exploitation by malicious users. Additionally,
once you identify these devices, how do you secure them from vulnerabilities such as
outdated operating software? Using Device-ID™ on your firewalls, you can get device
context for events on your network, obtain policy rule recommendations for those
devices, write policy rules based on devices, and enforce Security policy based on the
recommendations.
Similar to how User-ID provides user-based policy rules and App-ID provides app-based
policy rules, Device-ID provides policy rules that are based on a device, regardless of
changes to its IP address or location. By providing traceability for devices and
associating network events with specific devices, Device-ID lets you gain context for
how events relate to devices and adds policy rules that are associated with devices,
instead of users, locations, or IP addresses, which can change over time. You can use
Device-ID in Security, Decryption, Quality of Service (QoS), and Authentication policy
rules.
For Device-ID features to be available on a firewall, you must purchase a
Device Security subscription and select the firewall during the
Device Security
onboarding process.
To permit connections to
Device Security, a firewall needs a device license; and to
permit connections to
Strata Logging Service, it needs a
Strata Logging Service license. A firewall also requires a
device certificate to authenticate itself when
connecting to
Device Security and
Strata Logging Service.
You can use Device-ID to obtain IP address-to-device mappings to view device
context for network events, use Device Security to obtain policy rule
recommendations for these devices, and gain visibility for devices in reports and the
ACC.
You can create a device-based Security policy on any Panorama or firewall except
for the VM-50 series, VM-200, and the CN-Series.
To enforce the Security policy, the Panorama or firewall must have a valid
Device Security license.
To identify and classify devices, Device Security uses metadata from logs, network
protocols, and sessions on the firewall. This does not include private or sensitive
information or data that isn’t relevant for device identification. Metadata also forms
the basis of the expected behavior for the device, which then establishes the criteria
for the policy rule recommendation that defines what traffic and protocols to allow
for that device.
When a firewall imports Security policy rule recommendations and IP address-to-device
mappings from
Device Security, the firewall sends its
device certificate to an edge server to
authenticate itself. The edge server authenticates itself to the firewall by sending
its own certificate. The firewall uses Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) to
validate the server’s certificate by checking it against the following sites using
HTTP on TCP port 80:
- *.o.lencr.org
- x1.c.lencr.org
Panorama performs the same check to validate the edge server’s certificate when
Panorama imports policy rule recommendations from Device Security.
After Device Security identifies and classifies the devices in your network using
the Palo Alto Networks firewalls already there—so you don’t have to implement new
devices or third-party solutions—Device-ID can use this data to match devices with
policy rules and provide device context for network events. Through the visibility
that the firewall or Panorama provides for traffic, apps, users, devices, and
threats, you can instantly trace network events back to individual devices and obtain
Security policy rule recommendations for securing those devices.
All firewall platforms that with a supported PAN-OS version also
support Device-ID and Device Security except the VM-50 series,
VM-200, and the CN-Series.
There are six levels of classification (also known as attributes) for devices:
To obtain policy rule recommendations for devices in your network, the firewall
observes traffic to generate Enhanced Application logs (EALs). The firewall then
forwards the EALs to the
Strata Logging Service.
Device Security receives
logs from the
Strata Logging Service for analysis, provides IP
address-to-device mappings, and generates the latest
Security
policy rule recommendations for the device profiles of your devices. You can
then import the rule recommendations to the Security policy rulebase on a firewall or,
through Panorama, to the rulebase on multiple firewalls and commit your Security
policy.
To identify devices with dynamically assigned network settings, the firewall must be
able to observe DHCP broadcast and unicast traffic on your network.
Device Security also supports devices with static IP addresses. The more traffic
the firewall can observe, the more accurate the policy rule recommendations are for
the device and the more rapid and accurate the IP address-to-device mappings are for
the device. When a device sends DHCP traffic to obtain its network settings, the
firewall observes this type of request and generates EALs to send to the
Strata Logging Service, where Device Security accesses them for analysis.
To observe traffic on a Layer 2 interface, you must configure a VLAN for that
interface. By allowing the firewall to treat the interface as a Layer 3 interface
for a DHCP relay, it can observe the DHCP broadcast traffic without impacting
traffic or performance.
Because the firewall needs to both detect the devices based on their traffic and then
enforce Security policy for those devices, the firewall acts as both a
sensor to collect metadata from devices and an
enforcer by
enforcing your Security policy for the devices.
Device Security automatically
detects new devices as soon as they send DHCP traffic and can identify 95% of devices
within the first week.
Device Security automatically creates a policy rule recommendation for each
application used by devices in the same profile and pushes all its latest rule
recommendations for a profile when you choose a profile in the PAN-OS
web interface (Device or
).
After you import a policy rule recommendation into the Security policy rulebase, the
firewall or Panorama creates a source device object that identifies the
device profile where traffic originates.
If any of the device objects already exist on the firewall or Panorama, the firewall
or Panorama updates the device object instead of creating a new one. You can
use these device objects in Security, authentication, decryption, and Quality of
Service (QoS) policy rules.
Additionally, the firewall assigns two
tags to each rule:
-
One that identifies the source device, including the category (such as
Amazon Device).
-
One that indicates that the rule is an IoT policy rule recommendation
(IoTSecurityProfileBehavior).
For optimal deployment and operation of Device-ID, we recommend the following best
practices:
-
Deploy Device-ID on firewalls that are centrally located in your network. For
example, if you have a large environment, deploy Device-ID on a firewall that is
upstream from the IP address management (IPAM) device. If you have a small
environment, deploy Device-ID on a firewall that is acting as a DHCP server. For
more deployment suggestions, see
Device Security.
-
During initial deployment, allow Device-ID to collect metadata from your network
for at least 14 days. If devices are not active daily, the identification process
might take longer.
-
Create device-based policy rules in order from your most to least critical
devices. Use the following considerations to prioritize them:
- Class (secure networked devices first)
- Critical devices (such as servers or MRI machines)
- Environment-specific devices (such as fire alarms and badge readers)
-
Consumer-facing IoT devices (such as a smartwatch or smart speaker)
- Enable Device-ID on a per-zone basis for internal zones only.
