1.6.2 Log all Successful and Failed Administrative Logins

Information

By default failed logins are logged, but successful logins are not logged. This makes any configuration changes or successful malicious activity difficult to correctly attribute.

Rationale:

Logging of all device login attempts allows the security team to investigate all login attempts and successful logins as needed. In some organizations and for some switches, even successful logins will be configured to generate an alert that must be compared against authorized changes or assigned tickets. Without logging both successful and failed logins, several important components of any investigation may not be easily available for any subsequent investigation or analysis (userids, source IP addresses, login times and so on).

Impact:

Not logging successful logins means that unauthorized commands changes will be more difficult to attribute to the right person (though changes are logged with the login name by default on NX-OS). It also means that otherwise suspicious but successful logins (either because of the time of login, the source IP or other indicator) are not logged for further investigation.

Not logging unsuccessful logins means that brute force login attempts are not properly logged.

Solution

switch(config)# login level authpriv 5

Default Value:

By default failed logins are logged and successful logins are not logged.

Additional Information:

The methods in this recommendation are applicable to all NX-OS platforms. Some platforms will also support 'login on-success' and 'login on-failure' commands, but because of inconsistent support the use of these commands are not recommended.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/6524

Item Details

Category: ACCESS CONTROL, IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION

References: 800-53|AC-7, 800-53|AC-19, 800-53|IA-2(1), CSCv7|4.9, CSCv7|16.12

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: 620bd7c71051c9f59aa217645be965ffa2968b7f8f41b815109c33eda88a76d9