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Cisco Meraki Documentation

Threat Grid Integration

Threat Grid Overview

Cisco Threat Grid is a unified threat intelligence and malware analysis platform, which is tightly integrated with Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) solution. It performs automated static and dynamic analysis, producing human-readable reports with behavioral indicators for each file submitted. Threat Grid’s global scalability drives context-rich information that can be consumed directly or via content rich threat intelligence feeds.
 

Threat Grid analyzes suspicious files against more than 1500 behavioral indicators and a malware knowledge base sourced from around the world to provide industry-leading accuracy and context-rich threat analytics.

 

Leveraging Threat Grid as a part of a comprehensive network security strategy provides:

  • Deeper insights into what malware is doing or attempting to do, how substantial a threat it poses to your organization and how to defend against it

  • Accurate identification of threats with context-focused security analytics

  • Proactive protection for businesses using threat intelligence from Threat Grid Premium threat feeds

  • Defense against threats originating anywhere using the scale and power of a cloud service that analyzes hundreds of thousands of threats every day

Important updates required for MX to AMP and Threat Grid communications were implemented. To ensure that MX’s AMP and Threat Grid services continue to function as expected, please upgrade to these firmware versions or higher.

  • MX 14.56 and up

  • MX 15.43 and up

  • MX 16.7 and up

AMP enabled MX devices will need to be upgraded prior to the second half of 2023. As timelines approach the later half of 2023, a more concrete date will be shared.

Threat Grid enabled MX devices will need to be upgraded prior to Feb 2023. 

Note: If AMP enabled MX devices are not upgraded prior to the above mentioned dates, AMP will fail to connect to AMP Cloud and result in a fail closed behavior. This will cause all AMP inspected file downloads to be blocked unless AMP is manually disabled.

Note: 

  • AMP firmware upgrade date has been extended to the second half of 2023 instead of the initial communicated date Dec 1, 2021. As timelines approach the later half of 2022, a more concrete date will be shared.
  • Threat Grid firmware upgrade date has been extended to Feb 2023 instead of the initial communicated date Oct 1, 2021.

Threat Grid and Meraki MX Integration

The AMP integration with Meraki MX Security Appliance provides Meraki users with the capability to leverage AMP’s File Reputation and File Retrospection services and benefit from the global intelligence held in the AMP Cloud. The AMP Cloud responds to queries from MX devices on files that are downloaded and returns a file disposition of Clean, Malicious, or Unknown. Malicious files are blocked while Clean and Unknown files are allowed to pass through the MX to the end user. When Threat Grid integration is enabled, the MX will upload qualified, Unknown files to Threat Grid for additional static and dynamic analysis. Once the analysis is completed, a detailed report containing the threat score and behavioral indicators that matched the behaviors observed during analysis will be available in the Meraki Security Center. Depending on the severity of behaviors observed and a threat score, Meraki MX administrator may need to initiate further investigation and response. AMP for Endpoints is a complementary integrated endpoint protection solution which provides robust endpoint level visibility and control capabilities for threats that pass the perimeter defenses.

Note: AMP for Endpoints is licensed separately.

The supported file types for the File Analysis service are PE executables, DLLs, PDFs, MS Office Documents (RTF, DOC, PPT(x)). If threat trends indicate that new file types are being exploited, support for them will be transparently added.

Note: The number of daily file submissions which can be made to Threat Grid is determined by the organization’s Threat Grid license. Threat Grid Premium license is required to gain access to Threat Grid portal with advanced capabilities for malware research and investigations.

Configuration

Prerequisites

  1. Ensure that you have a valid Advanced Security license for your MX appliances

  2. Ensure that you have a valid Threat Grid license for MX or a Threat Grid Premium license

  3. Ensure that you have enabled AMP services on your MX appliances

Linking Threat Grid and Dashboard

Navigate to the Organization > Configure > Settings menu.

Under the Threat Grid heading, select the Integration type from the drop-down and select Cloud or On-Premise Appliance.

Note: Integration with Threat Grid Appliance is currently not supported. Once support is declared, this article will be updated.

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Next, click the "here" link to access the Threat Grid portal. When prompted, click ‘Authorize application’ to provide MX devices within your organization with permission to access your Threat Grid account.

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Note: You must be the Threat Grid organizational admin in order to allow Meraki MXs to access your Threat Grid account.

When Threat Grid and the Meraki Dashboard are successfully linked, you will be able to see the daily file submission limit for your organization and how many are currently available.

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Enable Threat Grid Submissions

Navigate to the Security & SD-WAN > Configure > Threat protection page.

Under the Threat Grid heading, set the mode to Enabled. If desired the rate limit can also be configured to limit the number of file submissions that the network can submit to Threat Grid for analysis in a 24-hour period. The rate limit cannot exceed the maximum allowed daily submissions.

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Reporting

To view the results of Threat Grid analysis, navigate to the Security & SD-WAN > Monitor > Security center page. Within the Security Center, select the Events view.

Files that have been submitted for analysis to Threat Grid will have the threat score and a list of associated behavioral indicators available in the Event view.

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Clicking the file name link will pull up an info-card that will provide additional information about the file. This will include more specific information about any of the behavioral indicators that matched to behaviors observed during Threat Grid analysis.

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Threat Grid Portal

Threat Grid Premium customers can also access the Threat Grid Premium Cloud portal, which allows users to perform detailed analysis and threat intelligence searches on samples analyzed by Threat Grid. Users can access the portal through a web interface or via a set of robust APIs, which Threat Grid provides. Threat Grid also provides curated feeds which can be used to augment existing customer threat intelligence platforms.

The Threat Grid Premium portal allows users to interact directly with live malware using the “Glove Box” feature and to view recordings of malware being executed in the virtual environment. Playbooks, process maps, JSON reports, sample runtime adjustments and many other features are available to Threat Grid Premium users.

Finally, the Threat Grid Premium portal offers users an organizational view of Threat Grid cloud submissions across AMP and Threat Grid-enabled devices in your organization.

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