CISC-L2-000080 - The Cisco switch must authenticate all endpoint devices before establishing any connection.

Information

Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity.

For distributed architectures (e.g., service-oriented architectures), the decisions regarding the validation of authentication claims may be made by services separate from the services acting on those decisions. In such situations, it is necessary to provide authentication decisions (as opposed to the actual authenticators) to the services that need to act on those decisions.

This requirement applies to applications that connect either locally, remotely, or through a network to an endpoint device (including, but not limited to, workstations, printers, servers (outside a datacenter), VoIP Phones, and VTC CODECs). Gateways and SOA applications are examples of where this requirement would apply.

Device authentication is a solution enabling an organization to manage devices. It is an additional layer of authentication ensuring only specific pre-authorized devices can access the system.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Configure 802.1 x authentications on all host-facing access switch ports. To authenticate those devices that do not support 802.1x, MAC Authentication Bypass must be configured.

Step 1: Configure the radius servers as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# radius-server host 10.1.1.1 key xxxx
SW1(config)# radius-server host 10.2.1.1 key xxxx

Step 2: Enable 802.1x authentication on the switch.

SW1(config)# aaa group server radius RADIUS_GROUP
SW1(config-radius)# server 10.1.1.1
SW1(config-radius)# server 10.2.1.1
SW1(config-radius)# exit
SW1(config)# aaa authentication dot1x default group RADIUS_GROUP
SW1(config)# exit

Step 3: Enable 802.1x on all host-facing interfaces as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# int e1/1 - 80
SW1(config-if-range)# dot1x port-control auto
SW1(config-if-range)# dot1x host-mode single-host
SW1(config-if-range)# end

Note: Host-mode must be set to single-host, multi-domain (for VoIP phone + PC), or multi-auth (multiple PCs connected to a hub). Host-mode multi-host is not compliant with this requirement.

Item Details

Audit Name: DISA Cisco NX OS Switch L2S STIG v3r2

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: f45bc6466cbca321a6bb7c7d839507d6d97b46c2362be116f58860ef98c5b453

Detections

Analytics

CISC-L2-000080 - The Cisco switch must authenticate all endpoint devices before establishing any connection.

Information

Solution

See Also

Item Details