The Cisco ASA must be configured to encrypt Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) messages using a FIPS 140-2 approved algorithm.

Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Bidirectional authentication provides stronger safeguards to validate the identity of other devices for connections that are of greater risk.

A local connection is any connection with a device communicating without the use of a network. A network connection is any connection with a device that communicates through a network (e.g., local area or wide area network, internet). A remote connection is any connection with a device communicating through an external network (e.g., the internet).

Because of the challenges of applying this requirement on a large scale, organizations are encouraged to only apply the requirement to those limited number (and type) of devices that truly need to support this capability.

Review the Cisco ASA configuration to verify that it is compliant with this requirement as shown in the example below.

snmp-server group NETOPS v3 priv snmp-server user FWADMIN NETOPS v3 engineID xxxxxxxxxxxx encrypted auth sha xxxxxxxxxxxx priv aes xxxxxxxxxxxx snmp-server host NDM_INTERFACE 10.1.48.10 version 3 FWADMIN

If the Cisco ASA is not configured to encrypt SNMP messages using a FIPS 140-2 approved algorithm, this is a finding.

Configure the Cisco ASA to encrypt SNMP messages using a FIPS 140-2 approved algorithm as shown in the example below.

ASA(config)# snmp-server group NETOPS v3 priv ASA(config)# snmp-server user FWADMIN NETOPS v3 auth sha xxxxxxxxxx priv aes xxxxxxxxxx ASA(config)# snmp-server host NDM_INTERFACE 10.1.48.10 version 3 FWADMIN ASA(config)# end