Cisco Vulnerabilities and Audit Checks

Overlooking threat vectors in an organization can be disastrous, and network infrastructure such as routers and switches often escape the purview of vulnerability scans. Scanning network infrastructure devices is important; however, most of the useful information collected from these devices is gained through log collection. This report provides a centralized view of vulnerability and log data collected from Cisco devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls.

Performing vulnerability scans on Cisco devices is perfectly safe. However, there is a stigma surrounding vulnerability scanning routers, switches, and firewalls. Due to this stigma, Cisco devices are often limited to being scanned on monthly basis and in very limited time windows. Creating targeted scan policies and only scanning the necessary devices can help reduce the stigma and allow the network team to become more comfortable with the vulnerability scanning of Cisco devices.

In addition to vulnerability scanning, Security Center comes with many audit files for Cisco devices. The audit files are automatically updated as part of the Security Center plugin feed, and are easily downloaded using the templates provided in Security Center GUI. The audit files support checks against DISA STIGs, CIS Configuration Guides, and other documented best practices. Security Center also supports editing audit files using a new GUI interface where key values such as NTP Server, Logging Server, and other settings can be easily modified. Once downloaded, audit files can be manually edited and re-imported into Security Center. By adding audit files to vulnerability scans, the network team can obtain information on potential configuration vulnerabilities found in the Cisco device configurations.

When incorporating Security Center into the daily operations of both the network team and security team, the overall improvement of security will increase. Using vulnerability and audit scans, along with passive and log collection, the organization will be able to gain a clear view of the risks and security concerns associated with their Cisco devices.

The report is available in the Security Center Feed, a comprehensive collection of dashboards, reports, Assurance Report Cards, and assets. The report can be easily located in the Security Center Feed under the category Threat Detection & Vulnerability Assessments. The report requirements are:

• Security Center 5.1.0
• Nessus 6.5.6

Tenable Security Center is the standard by which other solutions should measure themselves. Security Center provides continuous network monitoring to identify vulnerabilities, reduce risk, and ensure compliance. Continuous monitoring with Security Center allows for the most comprehensive and integrated view of network health. Security Center supports more technologies than any other vendor including operating systems, network devices, hypervisors, databases, tablets, phones, web servers, and critical infrastructure. The tight integration of vulnerability analysis, compliance review, and log correlation can help to make any Cisco network infrastructure more secure and stable.

Chapters

Executive Summary: This chapter provides a high level overview of data collected from Cisco devices using all available sources in Security Center. The data is from active and passive detection, and compliance data.

Vulnerability Data: This chapter provides a detailed list of all the vulnerabilities that have “Cisco” in the plugin name. The plugin name filter provides the most results of all three search methods. The chapter begins with a three-month trend analysis of vulnerabilities, followed by a summary by subnet. The final element is an iterator for all the vulnerabilities detected. Within the iterator is a severity summary chart, table of the detected vulnerabilities, and detailed description of each vulnerability detected.

Compliance Information: This chapter provides the details of compliance checks performed against Cisco devices. The chapter begins with a three-month trend analysis of compliance checks, followed by a summary by subnet. The final element is an iterator for all the compliance checks reported. Within the iterator is a severity summary chart, table of the detected audit checks, and detailed description of each audit check performed.