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Start with a supported, patched baseline
Patch status is the first security control. Ivanti says Connect Secure 22.7R2.6, released on February 11, 2025, fully patched CVE-2025-22457. Connect Secure 22.7R2.5 and earlier were affected. A temporary mitigation file or an old XML workaround is not a substitute for the official release once the patch is available.
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Inventory before changing settings
Record the exact ICS release, appliance hardware or virtual platform, active nodes, management addresses, enabled features and dependencies such as authentication, certificate, DNS, NTP, SIEM and syslog services. Include the Policy Secure deployment, if present, because it has a different exposure requirement. Preserve this inventory with the change record so a rebuild can be compared with the known-good state.
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Use Ivanti’s current release guidance
Subscribe to Ivanti security advisories and check the Ivanti Success portal for release-specific upgrade instructions. Choose the latest supported release that applies to the hardware or virtual platform rather than assuming every appliance can run the same image. Read the release notes for migration constraints, unsupported features and rollback behavior before scheduling downtime.
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Understand the vulnerability timeline
ICS hardening should account for more than one disclosure. On January 31, 2024, Ivanti reported four critical issues—CVE-2023-46805, CVE-2024-21887, CVE-2024-21888 and CVE-2024-21893—and provided patches and temporary mitigations for supported versions. On January 8, 2025, Ivanti reported CVE-2025-0282 and CVE-2025-0283; limited exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 had already occurred on Connect Secure appliances. The February 11, 2025 release of 22.7R2.6 addressed CVE-2025-22457 fully.
These dates do not define a safe minimum version for every deployment. Hardware support, feature compatibility and subsequent advisories can change that answer. Treat the version identifiers above as checkpoints in the advisory history, then verify the currently supported target in Ivanti’s portal.
Reduce what the appliance can reach
Keep Policy Secure off the public internet
Ivanti states that Policy Secure should not be an internet-facing solution. Place it on an internal management or access-control network and remove direct public exposure. If an existing design publishes Policy Secure, treat that as an architecture defect: plan the network change, confirm dependent authentication flows, and monitor for unexpected traffic while the correction is made.
Remove unnecessary administrative exposure
Keep administrative access on trusted management paths, such as a dedicated management segment reachable through an administrative jump host or equivalent control. Do not rely on the external interface for administration where the supported release has removed that capability. Review firewall, load-balancer and NAT rules for old management listeners after an upgrade; a disabled feature can still be exposed by an overlooked network path.
Restrict outbound egress
Permit only destinations and protocols required for the documented ICS functions: authentication, name resolution, time synchronization, certificate services, updates and approved monitoring. Deny broad outbound internet access by default and create narrowly scoped exceptions. Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency says restricting egress communications from the VPN appliance can mitigate command-and-control communications from backdoors. Log denied and allowed flows and alert on new destinations, unusual ports, direct-to-internet connections and traffic that begins after an upgrade.
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Layer the network controls
Place the gateway behind the organization’s edge firewalls and monitoring controls. Separate the external VPN listener, management plane and internal service networks where the design permits. Review inbound and outbound flow records together: an apparently normal login can be followed by a suspicious outbound connection, while a scanning pattern may be visible only at the perimeter. Do not assume a VPN appliance’s own access lists replace upstream segmentation.
Add integrity checks and preserve evidence
Run the external Integrity Checker Tool
Use Ivanti’s external Integrity Checker Tool, particularly after a suspected incident or an unexpected configuration change. Singapore CSA warned that attackers attempted to evade the built-in checker, so an external check provides an important independent view. Save the output with the appliance identifier, software version, time in UTC and the person who ran it. A clean result is evidence for the investigation, not proof that every compromise path is absent.
Record unauthenticated requests
Enable logging for unauthenticated web requests through this exact path:
- Sign in with an administrator account approved for security configuration.
- Open System > Log/Monitoring > User Access.
- Select Select Events to Log.
- Enable recording for unauthenticated web requests and save the change.
Confirm that events are actually generated and timestamped correctly. Check NTP configuration and investigate bursts of requests, requests for administrative paths, repeated failures and activity outside expected maintenance windows.
Forward security records off the appliance
Configure external syslog forwarding for all three relevant categories: Events, User Access and Admin Access. Store the records on a system with restricted write access and retention appropriate to the organization’s incident-response policy. Off-appliance copies remain available if an attacker alters or deletes local logs. Validate delivery by making a controlled administrative action and a test authentication event, then locate both records in the syslog platform.
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Preserve forensic images before rebuilding
If compromise is possible, preserve forensic and memory images before factory-resetting or rebuilding the unit, provided collection can be performed without allowing continued attacker access. Record who collected each image, when, from which appliance and how the files were hashed or otherwise protected. Export the current configuration separately; a configuration backup is useful for recovery but is not a substitute for forensic evidence.
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Prevent System Overload
Enable Prevent System Overload for mission-critical or high-utilization VPN environments. The setting is intended to keep resource exhaustion from taking down the service, but it should be introduced with capacity monitoring and a tested maintenance window. Observe CPU, memory, session counts, authentication latency and rejected connections after enabling it. Document what users see when protection engages so the operations team can distinguish controlled load shedding from an attack or hardware failure.
SecureBoot integrity behavior
Review the SecureBoot behavior for the target release. Ivanti’s 22.8R2 release notes describe boot-time integrity checks that stop the system when a failure is detected. A boot stop is a security control, not an incident-resolution procedure: keep a supported recovery image, validated configuration export and vendor escalation path available so an integrity failure can be investigated without improvising a downgrade.
Check feature support before migration
Security-hardening features documented for current releases are not automatically supported on every product. Ivanti’s 22.8R2.1 notes include migration constraints and state that these hardening features are not supported on IPS. Confirm the product family, target release and feature matrix before moving a deployment; do not copy settings from Connect Secure to an IPS installation without explicit support.
Use a repeatable hardening procedure
- Establish ownership and a maintenance window. Identify the system owner, security contact, network team, authentication owner and vendor-support route. Define rollback criteria before the change starts.
- Capture the baseline. Export configuration, record versions and enabled services, collect current flow and authentication logs, and run the external Integrity Checker Tool.
- Upgrade to the supported target. Follow the release-specific sequence in the Ivanti Success portal. Verify that the running version, cluster state and license or certificate functions are correct after reboot.
- Close exposure gaps. Remove public Policy Secure access, limit administration to trusted paths, delete obsolete NAT and firewall rules, and apply deny-by-default egress with documented exceptions.
- Configure evidence collection. Enable unauthenticated-request logging, forward Events, User Access and Admin Access to syslog, and verify receipt at the collector.
- Enable resilience. Turn on Prevent System Overload where the environment requires it, validate SecureBoot behavior for the release, and monitor capacity and boot status.
- Test the user journey. Confirm expected VPN authentication, authorization, DNS, certificate validation, split-tunnel or full-tunnel behavior and administrative access from the approved management path.
- Document and review. Store the final configuration, firewall and egress rules, test results, alert thresholds, contacts and recovery steps in the change record.
What to do when compromise is suspected
Do not treat a patch as proof that an already compromised appliance is clean. Use the following response sequence when integrity checks, logs, threat intelligence or unusual behavior indicate possible intrusion.
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1. Isolate the appliance
Disconnect the affected appliance from enterprise networks and resources, while coordinating the change so a redundant, known-good gateway can carry approved access if available. Restrict management access to the incident team and preserve perimeter and syslog records. Avoid repeatedly rebooting or making exploratory changes that could destroy volatile evidence.
2. Collect and share evidence
Run the external Integrity Checker Tool as directed by Ivanti, preserve forensic and memory images, export the configuration and retain relevant network, authentication and administrator logs. Provide the external checker results to Ivanti support. Keep a timeline of isolation, collection, upgrades, credential resets and every person who handled the system.
3. Rebuild instead of trusting a possibly altered image
Follow Ivanti’s factory-reset or rebuild path for the affected release. Where the advisory requires it, upgrade twice so a compromised version is not retained as the rollback image. Reapply only reviewed configuration; do not restore unknown scripts, unapproved files or a backup created after attacker access may have begun. Re-run the external checker after rebuilding and before reconnecting the appliance.
4. Rotate secrets and credentials
Rotate device-specific secrets and reset passwords for users who authenticated while credential-stealing malware may have been active. Include administrator, service, certificate-related and integration credentials that were present on or reachable from the appliance. Coordinate resets with identity and application owners so stale sessions, tokens and cached credentials are invalidated where those systems support it.
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Keep temporary mitigation files in place only as directed by the applicable advisory. Remove them after the official patch is installed when Ivanti’s instructions call for removal, and record the exact file and change time. Leaving emergency workarounds indefinitely can create configuration drift; removing them prematurely can reopen the original exposure.
Compare deployments by security outcome
Use these dimensions when reviewing sites, clusters or proposed migrations. They reveal meaningful differences more reliably than a simple version label.
| Review dimension | Stronger position | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Patch and support status | Supported release, advisory checked, upgrade sequence documented | 22.7R2.5 or earlier, unsupported hardware, or reliance on an old mitigation |
| Internet exposure | Policy Secure internal-only; VPN and management paths separated | Policy Secure publicly reachable or administration exposed through an external interface |
| Egress | Allow-list of required destinations with flow logging | Unrestricted outbound internet access |
| Integrity coverage | External checker run and results retained | Only the built-in checker used, with no independent evidence |
| Logging | Unauthenticated requests enabled; Events, User Access and Admin Access forwarded off-appliance | Local-only logs or unverified syslog delivery |
| Recovery readiness | Forensic-image procedure, configuration export and tested rebuild path | “Restore the backup” is the only recovery plan |
| Rollback safety | Rollback image checked for compromise and advisory-specific upgrade sequence followed | A potentially compromised version retained as the automatic rollback image |
Operational checks after hardening
- Verify the running release on every node, not just the administrator’s preferred node.
- Confirm external syslog receives all three required event categories after a controlled test.
- Review egress alerts for unexpected destinations and compare them with the approved exception list.
- Schedule recurring external integrity checks and retain results with change and incident records.
- Test administrator access only from the trusted management path and remove stale accounts and firewall rules.
- Monitor overload-protection events, VPN capacity and authentication failures so availability controls do not hide an attack.
- Recheck Ivanti advisories and the Success portal whenever a new CVE, release or platform migration is announced.
Bottom line
A defensible ICS deployment is patched, minimally exposed and independently observable. Upgrade to a supported release, keep Policy Secure internal, constrain egress and administration, export logs, run the external integrity checker, and prepare a rebuild that includes evidence preservation and secret rotation. If compromise is suspected, isolate first and restore service only after the vendor-directed rebuild and verification sequence is complete.
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