Hi, I'm Zachary Bennett. Welcome to the module, Managing
Access and Authorization with Squid.
In this introductory clip,
you'll get a high‑level overview of Squid, and you'll learn how it fits into the
broader security picture in NIST. In this course, we'll be looking at the tool,
Squid. Squid's a tool that you'll run into out in the wild quite a bit as a
security professional working with the web.
So what is Squid, and why do we care about it?
Well, Squid is one of those rare tools still in wide use today
that has been around for quite some time.
We're talking since the mid 1990s,
something, which in the software industry, might as well be since the
Stone Age. Squid was created by some computer scientists,
their names appearing here, who worked out of a couple of different universities.
But today, Squid is open source and is maintained
by a robust group of volunteers.
Simply put, Squid is a caching web proxy.
It sits in front of a web server and receives traffic on its behalf.
Squid has a number of benefits,
but in this course, we'll be most focused on the security
features and benefits that it provides.
Why is Squid used so ubiquitously today?
Well, first off,
it is very good as a proxy cache. It helps accelerate
servers that it receives traffic on behalf of. Squid is also
open source and freely available.
This plays a big role in why it is so widely used today.
It is kept up to date with patches and new versions coming out regularly.
This is impressive, given Squid's age. Squid is also very fast
and highly configurable. Squid has been around a long time, and
so it has pretty much any option you can think of when it comes
to configuring a web proxy.
Lastly and probably the biggest benefit of Squid is
that it reduces server bandwidth.
Squid is very good at receiving web traffic and sending out responses
on behalf of the servers that it sits in front of.
This reduces bandwidth tremendously for these servers.
So how does this all fit in when it comes to a cybersecurity perspective?
Well, first,
let's take a quick look at the NIST cybersecurity framework.
In this module and course, we'll be focusing in on the
protect function of the framework.
The protect function of the framework has everything to do with
limiting or containment of a potential cybersecurity event. In
this module, we'll see how Squid can be configured and used in
order to serve in this capacity.
Let's dive into this a little bit deeper though,
as each NIST framework function has categories and subcategories. Within
the protect function of the framework, we'll be looking at the Identity
Management and Access Control category.
This category is all about ensuring that users and user groups can only
access those resources, which they are meant to access, and that access to
resources in general are authenticated appropriately.
Specifically in this course, we'll be focused on a single
subcategory within identity management and access control,
namely PR.AC‑4. In this subcategory,
we're focused on making sure that access and authorization is properly managed.
The principles of least privilege and separation of duties must be adhered to.
Squid can be configured to ensure that users and groups of
users can only access those resources,
which they are meant to access and nothing else, but enough theory.
Please join me for the next clip where we'll dive into Squid
as a tool and learn how to start using it.