The U.S. government agency in charge of improving the nation’s cybersecurity posture is ordering all federal agencies to take new measures to restrict access to Internet-exposed networking equipment. The directive comes amid a surge in attacks targeting previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used security and networking appliances.
Under a new order from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), federal agencies will have 14 days to respond to any reports from CISA about misconfigured or Internet-exposed networking equipment. The directive applies to any networking devices — such as firewalls, routers and load balancers — that allow remote authentication or administration.
The order requires federal departments to limit access so that only authorized users on an agency’s local or internal network can reach the management interfaces of these devices. CISA’s mandate follows a slew of recent attacks wherein attackers exploited zero-day flaws in popular networking products to conduct ransomware and cyber espionage attacks on victim organizations.