The Cisco switch 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 switch configuration to determine if it automatically audits account modification.

Step 1: Verify that account records will be sent to an AAA server as shown in the example below:

aaa accounting default group RADIUS_SERVERS

Step 2: Verify that the referenced group name has defined AAA servers that are online.

aaa group server radius RADIUS_SERVERS server 10.1.48.10 server 10.1.48.12

Note: Cisco NX-OS devices report configuration activity to TACACS+ or RADIUS servers in the form of accounting records. Each accounting record contains accounting attribute-value (AV) pairs and is stored on the AAA server.

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

Configure the switch to log account modification using the following steps:

Step 1: Configure the AAA servers as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# radius-server host 10.1.48.10 SW1(config)# radius-server host 10.1.48.12

Step 2: Configure an AAA server group as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# aaa group server radius RADIUS_SERVERS SW1(config-radius)# server 10.1.48.10 SW1(config-radius)# server 10.1.48.12 SW1(config-radius)# exit

Step 3: Enable AAA accounting as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# aaa accounting default group RADIUS_SERVERS SW1(config)# end