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Fortinet FortiGate Firewall NDM Security Technical Implementation Guide

Overview

Version Date Finding Count (60) Downloads
1 2023-06-01 CAT I (High): 9 CAT II (Medium): 51 CAT III (Low): 0 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.
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Findings - All

Finding ID Severity Title Description
V-234218 High The FortiGate device must be configured to send log data to a central log server for the purpose of forwarding alerts to the administrators and the 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 be used to detect weaknesses in security that enable the network IA team to find and address these weaknesses before...
V-234216 High The FortiGate device must only allow authorized administrators to view or change the device configuration, system files, and other files stored either in the device or on removable media (such as a flash drive). 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-234214 High The FortiGate device must terminate idle sessions after 10 minutes of inactivity. 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. In addition, quickly terminating an idle session will also free up resources committed by...
V-234212 High The FortiGate device must implement cryptographic mechanisms using a FIPS 140-2 approved 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-234211 High The FortiGate devices 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-234210 High The FortiGate device must use FIPS 140-2 approved algorithms for authentication to a cryptographic module. Unapproved mechanisms that are used for authentication to the cryptographic module are not validated and therefore cannot be relied upon to provide confidentiality or integrity, and DoD data may be compromised. Network devices utilizing encryption are required to use FIPS-compliant mechanisms for authenticating to cryptographic modules. FIPS 140-2 is the...
V-234208 High The FortiGate device must use LDAPS for the LDAP connection. 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. Network devices can accomplish this by making direct function calls to encryption modules or by leveraging operating...
V-234199 High The FortiGate device must prohibit the use of all unnecessary and/or non-secure functions, ports, protocols, and/or services. To prevent unauthorized connection of devices, unauthorized transfer of information, or unauthorized tunneling (i.e., embedding of data types within data types), organizations must disable unused or unnecessary physical and logical ports/protocols on information systems. Network devices are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the...
V-234193 High The FortiGate device 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.
V-234221 Medium The FortiGate device must require that when a password is changed, the characters are changed in at least eight of the positions within the password. If the application allows the user to consecutively reuse extensive portions of passwords, this increases the chances of password compromise by increasing the window of opportunity for attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. The number of changed characters refers to the number of changes required with respect to the total...
V-234220 Medium The FortiGate device must only install patches or updates that are validated by the vendor via digital signature or hash. Changes to any software components can have significant effects on the overall security of the network device. Verifying software components have been digitally signed or hashed ensures that the software has not been tampered with and has been provided by a trusted vendor. Accordingly, patches, service packs, or application components...
V-234219 Medium The FortiGate device must limit the number of logon and user sessions. Device management includes the ability to control the number of administrators and management sessions that manage a device. Limiting the number of allowed administrators and sessions per administrator based on account type, role, or access type is helpful in limiting risks related to DoS attacks. This requirement addresses concurrent sessions...
V-234217 Medium The FortiGate device must protect against known types of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by employing organization-defined security safeguards. DoS prohibit a resource from being 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 on device availability....
V-234215 Medium The FortiGate device must generate unique session identifiers using a FIPS 140-2-approved random number generator. 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-234213 Medium The FortiGate device must terminate idle sessions after 10 minutes of inactivity. If a device management session or connection remains open after management is completed, it may be hijacked by an attacker and used to compromise or damage the network device. Nonlocal device management and diagnostic activities are those activities conducted by individuals communicating through a network, either an external network (e.g.,...
V-234209 Medium The FortiGate device must not have any default manufacturer passwords when deployed. Network devices not protected with strong password schemes provide the opportunity for anyone to crack the password and gain access to the device, which can result in loss of availability, confidentiality, or integrity of network traffic. Many default vendor passwords are well known or are easily guessed; therefore, not removing...
V-234207 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234206 Medium The FortiGate device must enforce password complexity by requiring at least one numeric 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-234205 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234204 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234203 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234202 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234201 Medium The FortiGate device must 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-234200 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234198 Medium The FortiGate device must use DoD-approved Certificate Authorities (CAs) for public key certificates. For user certificates, each organization obtains certificates from an approved, shared service provider, as required by OMB policy. For federal agencies operating a legacy public key infrastructure cross-certified with the Federal Bridge Certification Authority at medium assurance or higher, this CA will suffice.
V-234197 Medium FortiGate devices performing maintenance functions must restrict use of these functions to authorized personnel only. There are security-related issues arising from software brought into the network device specifically for diagnostic and repair actions (e.g., a software packet sniffer installed on a device to troubleshoot system traffic, or a vendor installing or running a diagnostic application to troubleshoot an issue with a vendor-supported device). If maintenance...
V-234196 Medium The FortiGate device must support organizational requirements to conduct backups of information system documentation, including security-related documentation, when changes occur or weekly, whichever is sooner. Information system backup is a critical step in maintaining data assurance and availability. Information system and security-related documentation contains information pertaining to system configuration and security settings. If this information was not backed up, and a system failure occurred, the security settings would be difficult to reconfigure quickly and accurately....
V-234195 Medium The FortiGate device must conduct backups of system-level information contained in the information system when changes occur. System-level information includes default and customized settings and security attributes, including ACLs that relate to the network device configuration, as well as software required for the execution and operation of the device. Information system backup is a critical step in ensuring system integrity and availability. If the system fails and...
V-234194 Medium The FortiGate device must generate log records for a locally developed list of auditable events. Auditing and logging are key components of any security architecture. 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...
V-234192 Medium The FortiGate device must use LDAP for authentication. 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-234191 Medium The FortiGate device must enforce access restrictions associated with changes to the system 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-234190 Medium The FortiGate device must limit privileges to change the software resident within software libraries. 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-234189 Medium The FortiGate device must enforce access restrictions associated with changes to device configuration. Failure to provide logical access restrictions associated with changes to device configuration may have significant effects on the overall security of the system. When dealing with access restrictions pertaining to change control, it should be noted that any changes to the hardware, software, and/or firmware components of the device can...
V-234188 Medium The FortiGate device must prohibit installation of software without explicit privileged status. Allowing anyone to install software, without explicit privileges, creates the risk that untested or potentially malicious software will be installed on the system. This requirement applies to code changes and upgrades for all network devices.
V-234187 Medium The FortiGate device must protect audit tools from unauthorized modification. Protecting audit data also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit data. Network devices providing tools to interface with audit data will leverage user permissions and roles identifying the user accessing the...
V-234186 Medium The FortiGate device must protect audit tools from unauthorized access. Protecting audit data also includes identifying and protecting the tools used to view and manipulate log data. Therefore, protecting audit tools is necessary to prevent unauthorized operation on audit data. Network devices providing tools to interface with audit data will leverage user permissions and roles, identifying the user accessing the...
V-234185 Medium The FortiGate device must protect audit information from unauthorized deletion. Audit information includes all information (e.g., audit records, audit settings, and audit reports) needed to successfully audit information system activity. If audit data were to become compromised, then forensic analysis and discovery of the true source of potentially malicious system activity is impossible to achieve. To ensure the veracity of...
V-234184 Medium The FortiGate device must record time stamps for audit records that can be mapped to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). 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), or local...
V-234183 Medium The FortiGate device must 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-234182 Medium The FortiGate device must generate an immediate real-time alert of all audit failure events requiring real-time alerts. 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 a real-time alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impending failure of the audit capability, and system operation may be adversely affected. Alerts provide...
V-234181 Medium The FortiGate device must off-load audit records on to a different system or media than the system being audited. Information stored in one location is vulnerable to accidental or incidental deletion or alteration. Offloading is a common process in information systems with limited audit storage capacity.
V-234180 Medium The FortiGate device must allocate audit record storage capacity in accordance with organization-defined audit record storage requirements. 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 for the...
V-234179 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234178 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records containing information that establishes the identity of any individual or process associated with the event. Without information that establishes the identity of the subjects (i.e., administrators or processes acting on behalf of administrators) associated with the events, security personnel cannot determine responsibility for the potentially harmful event. Event identifiers (if authenticated or otherwise known) include, but are not limited to, user database tables, primary key...
V-234177 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records when concurrent logons from different workstations occur. Without generating audit records 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., module or...
V-234176 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records showing starting and ending time for administrator access to the system. Without generating audit records 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., module or...
V-234175 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records for privileged activities or other system-level access. Without generating audit records 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., module or...
V-234174 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful 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-234173 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to delete administrator privileges occur. Without generating audit records 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., module or...
V-234172 Medium The FortiGate device must generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful attempts to modify administrator privileges occur. Without generating audit records 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., module or...
V-234171 Medium The FortiGate device must log all user activity. This requirement supports non-repudiation of actions taken by an administrator and is required 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 can be...
V-234170 Medium The FortiGate device must retain the Standard Mandatory DoD Notice and Consent Banner on the screen until the administrator acknowledges the usage conditions and takes explicit actions to log on for further access. The banner must be acknowledged by the administrator prior to the device allowing the administrator access to the network device. This ensures the administrator has seen the message and accepted the conditions for access. If the consent banner is not acknowledged by the administrator, DoD will not be in compliance...
V-234169 Medium The FortiGate device 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.
V-234168 Medium The FortiGate device must 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.
V-234167 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234166 Medium The FortiGate device must allow full access to only those individuals or roles designated by the ISSM. A mechanism to detect and prevent unauthorized communication flow must be configured or provided as part of the system design. If management information flow is not enforced based on approved authorizations, the network device may become compromised. Information flow control regulates where management information is allowed to travel within a...
V-234165 Medium The FortiGate device must have only one local account to be used as the account of last resort in the event the authentication server is unavailable. Authentication for administrative (privilege-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 the...
V-234164 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234163 Medium The FortiGate device 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-234162 Medium The FortiGate device 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...