CCT 322: From Firewalls To AI: Building A Smarter Defense - CISSP Domain 7.7

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The weakest link is often sitting on the edge, blinking away with expired firmware and no vendor support. We kick off with a blunt reality check on outdated firewalls, load balancers, and IoT gateways, and why waiting two years to retire them is a gift to attackers. From there, we guide you through Domain 7.7 with a practical blueprint for operating and maintaining detective and preventive measures that actually hold up under pressure.

We unpack firewall fundamentals with clear, real‑world tradeoffs: when a simple packet filter is enough, when stateful inspection and deep packet inspection earn their keep, and how a WAF stops the web attacks your L3/L4 controls will miss. You’ll hear how RTBH can deflect denial‑of‑service floods upstream, and why segmentation is your best friend for reducing blast radius—whether you use internal segmentation firewalls for R&D, Purdue‑style tiers for industrial networks, or controlled air gaps for the most sensitive systems. In the cloud, we separate security groups from true firewalls and show how to stitch policies across hybrid environments without creating blind spots.

Detection makes prevention smarter, so we break down IDS versus IPS in plain language. Baseline first, then block with intent to avoid outages. We compare host‑based and network‑based sensors, explain where to place them, and share tactics for cutting alert noise. You’ll also get straight talk on allowlists and blacklists, the right way to maintain them, and why stale entries cause the ugliest outages. We explore sandboxing for safe detonation and learning, and give an unvarnished take on honeypots and honeynets—where they help, where they waste time, and what legal lines to respect.

Not every team can build a 24x7 SOC, so we outline how MSSPs can extend your coverage with clear SLAs and ownership. Endpoint anti‑malware remains non‑negotiable, but tool sprawl is a trap—choose a strong EDR and manage it well. Finally, we dive into AI and machine learning: how they supercharge detection, triage, and response—and how adversaries use them too. The throughline is simple: shrink attack surface, raise signal quality, and respond faster than threats can pivot. If this helps you secure one more edge box or tune one more control, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more practical walkthroughs, and drop a review so we can keep raising the bar together.

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