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CISC-ND-001370 - The Cisco switch must be configured to use at least two authentication servers for the purpose of authenticating users prior to granting administrative access.

Information

Centralized management of user accounts and authentication increases the administrative access to the switch. This control is a 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 following example:

R4(config)#radius server RADIUS1
R4(config-radius-server)#address ipv4 x.x.x.x auth-port 1812 acct-port 1813
R4(config-radius-server)#key xxxxxxx
R4(config-radius-server)#radius server RADIUS2
R4(config-radius-server)#address ipv4 x.x.x.x auth-port 1812 acct-port 1813
R4(config-radius-server)#key xxxxxxx

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

R4(config)#aaa group server radius RADIUS_GROUP
R4(config)#server name RADIUS1
R4(config)#server name RADIUS2

R4(config)#aaa authentication login CONSOLE group RADIUS_GROUP local

R4(config)#aaa authentication login LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION group RADIUS_GROUP local

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

R4(config)#line vty 0 1
R4(config-line)#login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION
R4(config-line)#exit
R4(config)#line con 0
R4(config-line)#login authentication CONSOLE
R4(config-line)#exit
R4(config)#ip http authentication aaa login-authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_IOS-XE_Switch_Y26M04_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6(1), CAT|I, CCI|CCI-000370, Rule-ID|SV-220565r1195273_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-ND-001370, STIG-Legacy|SV-110585, STIG-Legacy|V-101481, Vuln-ID|V-220565

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: 59be1ea6467eca081cc176f2b77012197fdeae19edc3ac19582d835899aeadac