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CISC-L2-000160 - The Cisco switch must have Storm Control configured on all host-facing switchports.

Information

A traffic storm occurs when packets flood a LAN, creating excessive traffic and degrading network performance. Traffic storm control prevents network disruption by suppressing ingress traffic when the number of packets reaches a configured threshold level.

Traffic storm control monitors ingress traffic levels on a port and drops traffic when the number of packets reaches the configured threshold level during any one-second interval.

The primary intent of this control is to mitigate the risk of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, not to arbitrarily restrict bandwidth needed for operations. Consequently, some ports may be configured to operate at full line-rate speed if deemed necessary by the engineer to meet mission requirements. The ultimate responsibility for managing bandwidth to prevent a DoS while ensuring service availability rests with the network engineer.

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

Solution

Configure storm control for each host-facing interface as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)#int range e0/2 - 8
SW1(config-if-range)# storm-control unicast level 50
SW1(config-if-range)# storm-control broadcast level 40

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_NX-OS_Switch_Y26M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|III, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-220687r1205858_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-L2-000160, STIG-Legacy|SV-110349, STIG-Legacy|V-101245, Vuln-ID|V-220687

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: 00d7b48e0111c38b290754dc58eb33fd7a397e5f20d637c6458cbf99ba527331