The Cisco switch must be configured to authenticate SNMP messages using a FIPS-validated Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC).

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

snmp-server user NETOPS auth sha 5Er23@#as178 priv aes-128 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

snmp-server host 10.1.48.10 traps version 3 priv NETOPS

Authentication used by the SNMP users can be viewed via the show snmp user command as shown in the example below:

SW1# show snmp user ______________________________________________________________ SNMP USERS ______________________________________________________________

User Auth Priv(enforce) Groups acl_filter ____ ____ ___________ ______ __________ NETOPS sha aes-128 network-operator

If the Cisco switch is not configured to authenticate SNMP messages using a FIPS-validated HMAC, this is a finding.

Configure the Cisco switch to authenticate SNMP messages as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)# snmp-server user NETOPS auth sha xxxxxxxxxxxxx priv aes-128 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

SW1(config)# snmp-server host 10.1.48.10 traps version 3 priv NETOPS