Securing Cisco Networks with Snort Rule Writing Best Practices is a lab-intensive course that introduces users of open source Snort or Sourcegire FIRESIGHT systems to the Snort rules language and rule-writing best practices. Users focus exclusively on the Snort rules language and rule writing. Starting from rule syntax and structure to advanced rule-option usage, you will analyze exploit packet captures and put the rule writing theories learned to work—implementing rule-language features to trigger alerts on the offending network traffic.This course also provides instruction and lab exercises on how to detect certain types of attacks, such as buffer overflows, utilizing various rule-writing techniques. You will test your rule-writing skills in two challenges: a theoretical challenge that tests knowledge of rule syntax and usage, and a practical challenge in which we present an exploit for you to analyze and research so you can defend your installations against the attack.This course combines lecture materials and hands-on labs throughout to make sure that you are able to successfully understand and implement open source rules.