CISC-ND-000550 - The Cisco switch must be configured to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

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Information

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password.

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

Configure the Cisco switch to enforce a minimum 15-character password length as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)#aaa common-criteria policy PASSWORD_POLICY
SW1(config-cc-policy)#min-length 15
SW1(config-cc-policy)#exit

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_IOS_Switch_Y21M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), CAT|II, CCI|CCI-000205, Rule-ID|SV-220589r521267_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-ND-000550, STIG-Legacy|SV-110407, STIG-Legacy|V-101303, Vuln-ID|V-220589

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: a1b37655f00a79a748348d83f401cb8408283adc8e5e11d5c10f060ff64a0f97