Detections
Analytics

CISC-ND-001370 - The Cisco switch must be configured to use at least two authentication servers to authenticate users prior to granting administrative access.

Information

Centralized management of user accounts and authentication increases the administrative access to the switch. This control is particularly important protection against the insider threat.

With robust centralized management, audit records for administrator account access to the organization's network devices can be more readily analyzed for trends and anomalies. The alternative method of defining administrator accounts on each device exposes the device configuration to remote access authentication attacks and system administrators with multiple authenticators for each network device.

Solution

Step 1: Configure the Cisco switch to use at least two authentication servers as shown in the example below:

SW4(config)#radius host 10.1.48.2 key xxxxxx
SW4(config)#radius host 10.1.48.3 key xxxxxx

Step 2: Configure the authentication order to use the authentication servers as the primary source for authentication as shown in the example below:

SW4(config)#aaa authentication CONSOLE group radius local

SW4(config)#aaa authentication login LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION group radius local

Step 3: Configure all network connections associated with device management to use the authentication servers for login authentication:

SW4(config)#line vty 0 1
SW4(config-line)#login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION
SW4(config-line)#exit
SW4(config)#line con 0
SW4(config-line)#login authentication CONSOLE
SW4(config-line)#exit
SW4(config)#ip http authentication aaa login-authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_IOS_Switch_Y26M04_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6(1), CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000370, Rule-ID|SV-220617r1156817_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-ND-001370, STIG-Legacy|SV-110463, STIG-Legacy|V-101359, Vuln-ID|V-220617

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: c02a404918a40719432fe15c52203c7950918379d43b4527e81701d96b75e459