The Cisco router must be configured to use at least two authentication servers for the purpose of authenticating users prior to granting administrative access.

Centralized management of user accounts and authentication increases the administrative access to the router. This control is 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.

Review the Cisco router configuration to verify that the device is configured to use at least two authentication servers as primary source for authentication as shown in the following example:

radius-server host 10.1.3.16 auth-port 1645 acct-port 1646 key xxxxxxxxxx radius-server host 10.1.3.17 auth-port 1645 acct-port 1646 key xxxxxxxxxx… … … aaa authentication login LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION group radius local line console login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION ! line default login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION transport input ssh

If the Cisco router is not configured to use at least two authentication servers for the purpose of authenticating users prior to granting administrative access, this is a finding.

Step 1: Configure the router to use at least two authentication servers as shown in the following example:

RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config)#radius-server host 10.1.3.16 key xxxxxxxx RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config)#radius-server host 10.1.3.17 key xxxxxxxx

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

RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config)#aaa authentication login LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION group radius local

Step 3: Configure all network connections associated with a device management to use the authentication servers for the purpose of login authentication as shown in the following example:

RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config)#line default RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config-line)#login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config-line)#exit RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config)#line console RP/0/0/CPU0:R3(config-line)#login authentication LOGIN_AUTHENTICATION