The Cisco router must be configured to automatically audit account modification.

Since the accounts in the network device are privileged or system-level accounts, account management is vital to the security of the network device. Account management by a designated authority ensures access to the network device is being controlled in a secure manner by granting access to only authorized personnel with the appropriate and necessary privileges. Auditing account modification along with an automatic notification to appropriate individuals will provide the necessary reconciliation that account management procedures are being followed. If modifications to management accounts are not audited, reconciliation of account management procedures cannot be tracked.

Review the router configuration to determine if it automatically audits account modification. The configuration should look similar to the example below:

archive log config logging enable

Note: Configuration changes can be viewed using the show archive log config all command.

If account modification is not automatically audited, this is a finding.

Configure the router to log account modification using the following commands:

R4(config)#archive R4(config-archive)#log config R4(config-archive-log-cfg)#logging enable R4(config-archive-log-cfg)#logging size 1000 R4(config-archive-log-cfg)#notify syslog contenttype plaintext R4(config-archive-log-cfg)#hidekeys R4(config-archive-log-cfg)#end