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Cisco ISE NDM Security Technical Implementation Guide

Overview

Version Date Finding Count (53) Downloads
2 2024-09-10 CAT I (High): 9 CAT II (Medium): 41 CAT III (Low): 3 Excel JSON XML
Stig Description
This Security Technical Implementation Guide is published as a tool to improve the security of Department of Defense (DOD) information systems. The requirements are derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 and related documents. Comments or proposed revisions to this document should be sent via email to the following address: disa.stig_spt@mail.mil.
Classified Public Sensitive  
I - Mission Critical Classified I - Mission Critical Public I - Mission Critical Sensitive II - Mission Critical Classified II - Mission Critical Public II - Mission Critical Sensitive III - Mission Critical Classified III - Mission Critical Public III - Mission Critical Sensitive

Findings - All

Finding ID Severity Title Description
V-242659 High The Cisco ISE must only allow authorized administrators to view or change the device configuration, system files, and other files stored. This requirement is intended to address the confidentiality and integrity of system information at rest (e.g., network device rule sets) when it is located on a storage device within the network device or as a component of the network device. This protection is required to prevent unauthorized alteration, corruption, or...
V-242657 High The Cisco ISE must terminate all network connections associated with a device management session at the end of the session, or the session must be terminated after five minutes of inactivity except to fulfill documented and validated mission requirements. Terminating an idle session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended.
V-242656 High The Cisco ISE must be configured to implement cryptographic mechanisms using a FIPS 140-2 validated algorithm to protect the confidentiality of remote maintenance sessions. This requires the use of secure protocols instead of their unsecured counterparts, such as SSH instead of telnet, SCP instead of FTP, and HTTPS instead of HTTP. If unsecured protocols (lacking cryptographic mechanisms) are used for sessions, the contents of those sessions will be susceptible to eavesdropping, potentially putting sensitive...
V-242655 High The Cisco ISE must verify the checksum value of any software download, including install files (ISO or OVA), patch files, and upgrade bundles. Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Nonlocal maintenance and diagnostic activities are those activities conducted by individuals communicating through a network, either an external network (e.g., the Internet) or an internal network. Currently, HMAC is the only FIPS-approved algorithm for generating and verifying...
V-242653 High The Cisco ISE must use FIPS-validated SHA-2 (or greater) to protect the integrity of hash message authentication code (HMAC), Key Derivation Functions (KDFs), Random Bit Generation, and hash-only applications. Without cryptographic integrity protections, information can be altered by unauthorized users without detection. Nonlocal maintenance and diagnostic activities are activities conducted by individuals communicating through either an external network (e.g., the Internet) or an internal network. Note: Although allowed by SP800-131Ar1 for some applications, SHA-1 is considered a compromised hashing...
V-242651 High For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must use FIPS-validated SHA-2 or later protocol to protect the integrity of the password authentication process. Passwords need to be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If passwords are not encrypted, they can be plainly read (i.e., clear text) and easily compromised. The information system must specify the hash algorithm used for authenticating passwords. Implementation of this requirement requires...
V-242641 High The Cisco ISE must be configured to disable Wireless Setup for production systems. ISE Wireless Setup is beta software so is not authorized for use in DoD. Wireless Setup is disabled by default after fresh installation of Cisco ISE. If you upgrade ISE from a previous version, the Wireless Setup menu does not appear. Wireless Setup requires ports 9103 and 9104 to be...
V-242640 High The Cisco ISE must be configured to prohibit the use of all unnecessary and/or nonsecure functions, ports, protocols, and/or services. Changes to any software components of the network device can have significant effects on the overall security of the network. Therefore, only qualified and authorized individuals should be allowed administrative access to the network device for implementing any changes or upgrades. If the network device were to enable non-authorized users...
V-242615 High The Cisco ISE must prevent non-privileged users from executing privileged functions to include disabling, circumventing, or altering implemented security safeguards/countermeasures. Preventing non-privileged users from executing privileged functions mitigates the risk that unauthorized individuals or processes may gain unnecessary access to information or privileges. Privileged functions include, for example, establishing accounts, performing system integrity checks, or administering cryptographic key management activities. Non-privileged users are individuals that do not possess appropriate authorizations.
V-242663 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records containing the full-text recording of privileged commands. Reconstruction of harmful events or forensic analysis is not possible if audit records do not contain enough information. Organizations consider limiting the additional audit information to only that information explicitly needed for specific audit requirements. The additional information required is dependent on the type of information (i.e., sensitivity of the...
V-242662 Medium The Cisco ISE must initiate session auditing upon startup. If auditing is enabled late in the startup process, the actions of some start-up processes may not be audited. Some audit systems also maintain state information only available if auditing is enabled before a given process is created.
V-242661 Medium The Cisco ISE must be configured to send log data to at least two central log servers for the purpose of forwarding alerts to the administrators and the information system security officer (ISSO). The aggregation of log data kept on a syslog server can be used to detect attacks and trigger an alert to the appropriate security personnel. The stored log data can used to detect weaknesses in security that enable the network IA team to find and address these weaknesses before breaches...
V-242660 Medium The Cisco ISE must configure the control plane to protect against or limit the effects of common types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on the device itself by configuring applicable system options and internet-options. DoS is a condition when a resource is not available for legitimate users. When this occurs, the organization either cannot accomplish its mission or must operate at degraded capacity. This requirement addresses the configuration of network devices to mitigate the impact of DoS attacks that have occurred or are ongoing...
V-242658 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate unique session identifiers using a FIPS 140-2 approved Random Number Generator (RNG) using DRGB. Sequentially generated session IDs can be easily guessed by an attacker. Employing the concept of randomness in the generation of unique session identifiers helps to protect against brute-force attacks to determine future session identifiers. Unique session IDs address man-in-the-middle attacks, including session hijacking or insertion of false information into a...
V-242654 Medium The Cisco ISE must use FIPS-validated Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC) to protect the integrity of nonlocal maintenance and diagnostic communications. Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not verified and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. Nonlocal maintenance and diagnostic activities are those activities conducted by individuals communicating through a network, either an external network...
V-242652 Medium The Cisco ISE must prohibit the use of cached authenticators after an organization-defined time period. Some authentication implementations can be configured to use cached authenticators. If cached authentication information is out-of-date, the validity of the authentication information may be questionable. The organization-defined time period should be established for each device depending on the nature of the device; for example, a device with just a few...
V-242649 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one special character be used. Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it...
V-242648 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one digit be used. Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it...
V-242647 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one lowercase character be used. Use of a complex password helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it...
V-242646 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must enforce password complexity by requiring that at least one uppercase character be used. Use of a complex passwords helps to increase the time and resources required to compromise the password. Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password complexity is one factor of several that determine how long it...
V-242645 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must 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...
V-242644 Medium The Cisco ISE must authenticate Network Time Protocol (NTP) sources using authentication that is cryptographically based. If NTP is not authenticated, an attacker can introduce a rogue NTP server. This rogue server can then be used to send incorrect time information to network devices, which will make log timestamps inaccurate and affect scheduled actions. NTP authentication is used to prevent this tampering by authenticating the time...
V-242643 Medium The Cisco ISE 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...
V-242642 Medium For accounts using password authentication, the Cisco ISE must implement replay-resistant authentication mechanisms for network access to privileged accounts. A replay attack may enable an unauthorized user to gain access to the application. Authentication sessions between the authenticator and the application validating the user credentials must not be vulnerable to a replay attack. An authentication process resists replay attacks if it is impractical to achieve a successful authentication by...
V-242639 Medium The Cisco ISE must use DoD-approved PKI rather than proprietary or self-signed device certificates. To mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information by entities that have been issued certificates by DoD-approved PKIs. The Cisco ISE generates a key-pair and a CSR. The CSR is sent to the approved CA, who signs it and returns it as a certificate. That certificate is then...
V-242636 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate log records for a locally developed list of auditable events. Logging the actions of specific events provides a means to investigate an attack; to recognize resource utilization or capacity thresholds; or to identify an improperly configured network device. If auditing is not comprehensive, it will not be useful for intrusion monitoring, security investigations, and forensic analysis. In Cisco ISE a...
V-242634 Medium The Cisco ISE must be running an operating system release that is currently supported by the vendor. Network devices running an unsupported operating system lack current security fixes required to mitigate the risks associated with recent vulnerabilities. The recommended best practice is for the organization to implement a patch management process for Junos OS. The process should involve testing and verification of the authenticity of vendor-provided updated....
V-242633 Medium The Cisco ISE must be configured to use an external authentication server to authenticate administrators prior to granting administrative access. Centralized management of authentication settings increases the security of remote and nonlocal access methods. This control is particularly important protection against the insider threat. With robust centralized management, audit records for administrator account access to the organization's network devices can be more readily analyzed for trends and anomalies. The alternative...
V-242632 Medium The Cisco ISE must enforce access restrictions associated with changes to the firmware, OS, and hardware components. Changes to the hardware or software components of the network device can have significant effects on the overall security of the network. Therefore, only qualified and authorized individuals should be allowed administrative access to the network device for implementing any changes or upgrades. This requirement applies to updates of the...
V-242630 Medium The Cisco ISE must record time stamps for audit records that can be mapped to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). If time stamps are not consistently applied and there is no common time reference, it is difficult to perform forensic analysis. Time stamps generated by the application include date and time. Time is commonly expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a modern continuation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
V-242629 Medium The Cisco ISE must be configured to synchronize internal information system clocks using redundant authoritative time sources. The loss of connectivity to a particular authoritative time source will result in the loss of time synchronization (free-run mode) and increasingly inaccurate time stamps on audit events and other functions. Multiple time sources provide redundancy by including a secondary source. Time synchronization is usually a hierarchy; clients synchronize time...
V-242628 Medium The Cisco ISE must send an alarm to one or more individuals when the monitoring collector process has an error or failure. It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without an alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability and system operation may be adversely affected. Cisco ISE provides...
V-242627 Medium The Cisco ISE must configure a remote syslog where audit records are stored on a centralized logging target that is different from the system being audited. Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Storing audit logs to a different system than that being audited is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity.
V-242626 Medium The Cisco ISE must limit audit record storage capacity for all locally stored logs. In order to ensure network devices have a sufficient storage capacity in which to write the audit logs, they need to be able to allocate audit record storage capacity. The task of allocating audit record storage capacity is usually performed during initial device setup if it is modifiable. The value...
V-242625 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records when concurrent logons from different workstations occur. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g.,...
V-242624 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records for privileged activities or other system-level access. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g.,...
V-242623 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records when successful logon attempts occur. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g.,...
V-242622 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records when successful attempts to delete administrator privileges occur. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g.,...
V-242621 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records when successful attempts to modify administrator privileges occur. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g.,...
V-242620 Medium The Cisco ISE must generate audit records when successful attempts to access privileges occur. Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the information system (e.g.,...
V-242619 Medium The Cisco ISE must protect against an individual (or process acting on behalf of an individual) falsely denying having performed organization-defined actions to be covered by non-repudiation. This requirement supports non-repudiation of actions taken by an administrator and is required in order to maintain the integrity of the configuration management process. All configuration changes to the network device are logged, and administrators authenticate with two-factor authentication before gaining administrative access. Together, these processes will ensure the administrators...
V-242618 Medium For the local account of last resort, the Cisco ISE must display the Standard Mandatory DoD Notice and Consent Banner before granting access to the device. Display of the DoD-approved use notification before granting access to the network device ensures privacy and security notification verbiage used is consistent with applicable federal laws, Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards, and guidance. System use notifications are required only for access via logon interfaces with human users, such as...
V-242617 Medium The Cisco ISE must be configured to enforce the limit of three consecutive invalid logon attempts, after which time it must lock out the user account from accessing the device for 15 minutes. By limiting the number of failed login attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute-forcing, is reduced. If the administrator enters an incorrect password three times, the Admin portal locks the account, adds a log entry in the Server Administrator Logins report, and...
V-242616 Medium The Cisco ISE must audit the execution of privileged functions. Misuse of privileged functions, either intentionally or unintentionally by authorized users, or by unauthorized external entities that have compromised information system accounts, is a serious and ongoing concern and can have significant adverse impacts on organizations. Auditing the use of privileged functions is one way to detect such misuse and...
V-242614 Medium The Cisco ISE must be configured with only one local web-based account to be used as the account of last resort in the event the authentication server is unavailable. Authentication for administrative (privileged level) access to the device is required at all times. An account can be created on the device's local database for use when the authentication server is down or connectivity between the device and the authentication server is not operable. This account is referred to as...
V-242612 Medium For the local account of last resort, the Cisco ISE must automatically audit account removal actions. Account management, as a whole, ensures access to the network device is being controlled in a secure manner by granting access to only authorized personnel. Auditing account removal actions will support account management procedures. When device management accounts are terminated, user or service accessibility may be affected. Auditing also ensures...
V-242611 Medium For the local web-based account of last resort, the Cisco ISE must automatically audit account disabling actions. Account management, as a whole, ensures access to the network device is being controlled in a secure manner by granting access to only authorized personnel. Auditing account disabling actions will support account management procedures. When device management accounts are disabled, user or service accessibility may be affected. Auditing also ensures...
V-242610 Medium For the local web-based account of last resort and the default local CLI account, the Cisco ISE must 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...
V-242609 Medium For the local web-based account of last resort, the Cisco ISE must automatically audit account creation. Upon gaining access to a network device, an attacker will often first attempt to create a persistent method of reestablishing access. One way to accomplish this is to create a new account. Notification of account creation helps to mitigate this risk. Auditing account creation provides the necessary reconciliation that account...
V-242608 Medium The Cisco ISE must change the password for the local CLI and web-based account when members who have access to the password leave the role and are no longer authorized access. If shared/group account credentials are not terminated when individuals leave the group, the user that left the group can still gain access even though they are no longer authorized. There may also be instances when specific user actions need to be performed on the network device without unique administrator identification...
V-242638 Low The Cisco ISE must conduct configuration and operational backups when changes are made or must schedule backups weekly, at a minimum. If this information is not backed up and a system failure was to occur, the security settings would be difficult to reconfigure quickly and accurately, thus increasing adverse impact of the outage. There are two types of ISE backups: Configuration backup and operational backup. This requirement pertains to the configuration....
V-242613 Low The Cisco ISE must automatically audit account enabling actions. Once an attacker establishes initial access to a system, the attacker often attempts to create a persistent method of reestablishing access. One way to accomplish this is for the attacker to simply enable a new or disabled account. Notification of account enabling is one method for mitigating this risk. A...
V-242607 Low The Cisco ISE must limit the number of CLI and GUI sessions to an organization-defined number. Device management includes the ability to control the number of management sessions that manage a device. Limiting the number of allowed sessions is helpful in limiting risks related to DoS attacks. This requirement addresses concurrent sessions for administrative access. The maximum number of concurrent sessions should be defined based upon...