The Cisco switch must be configured to enforce a minimum 15-character password length.

Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password.

The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

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

aaa new-model ! ! aaa common-criteria policy PASSWORD_POLICY min-length 15

If the Cisco switch is not configured to enforce a minimum 15-character password length, this is a finding.

Configure the Cisco switch to enforce a minimum 15-character password length as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)#aaa common-criteria policy PASSWORD_POLICY SW1(config-cc-policy)#min-length 15 SW1(config-cc-policy)#exit