Lab 5.4 - Creating an ASM Policy by calling the iControl LX extension

In this lab we will use the Postman client to create an ASM policy in a single call to the BIG-IP.

Task 1 - Check BIG-IP for existing ASM policies

First let’s take a look at the existing policies on the BIG-IP.

1. In your web browser, navigate to BIG-IP: https://10.1.1.245/

2. Navigate to Main > Security > Application Security > Security Policies

   

3. As seen in the sceenshot above there are no existing policies on the BIG-IP.

Task 2 - Perform REST call using Postman to create policy

Now let’s use Postman to create an ASM policy.

First we have to authenticate to the BIG-IP and obtain a token using Postman.

1. Select Step1: Request token from BIG-IP from the collections tab, then select Send.

   

   Note

   In this and subsequent steps, please take a moment to review the content of each request in Postman. This will help familiarize you with REST API syntax, as well as how to interact with the REST API from a third-party client.

2. This will generate a token used to authenticate future REST calls from Postman.

3. Select Step2: Increase Auth Token Timeout on BIG-IP from the collections tab, then select Send. This will extend the token timeout to 36000 seconds.

   

4. Select iControl LX ASM Create Policy POST from the collections tab, then select Send. This will create an ASM policy using the iControl LX RPM package uploaded earlier. Note the POST body contains only a name for the policy, in this case the name is “iControlLX_Agility2018”. This will be the name of the ASM policy that’s created on the BIG-IP.

   

   Note

   It will take about 15-20 seconds to generate the policy after hitting the Send button in Postman. Please wait this amount of time before proceeding to the following task.

Task 3 - Verify ASM policy has been created

There are two different ways we will verify that the ASM policy has been created. We will check using Postman and will also check via the GUI.

1. To check if the policy has been created using Postman, select iControl LX ASM Create Policy GET from the collections tab, then select Send. Look for the field id:<unique_id> in the response. This will tell you the policy has been created.

   

2. To check if the policy has been created using the GUI, in your web browser navigate to BIG-IP: https://10.1.1.245/. Then navigate to Main > Security > Application Security > Security Policies. You will see the newly created policy.

   

   Note

   What have we accomplished? We used Postman to create an ASM policy by only sending the name of the policy. The iControl LX Extension that we installed on the BIG-IP, SecurityAdd-0.2-002.noarch.rpm, accepts the name of the policy then executes the rest of the requirements to build the policy. The policy is now ready to be associated with a Virtual Server.