Basic Device Security

Authors
  • avatar
    Name
    Michael Bui
    Twitter

Overview

The purpose of this lab is to get familiar with Cisco's IOS CLI.

We are going to configure a Cisco router & switch's basic security settings.

This is the layout of the network we'll be looking at:

Instructions

Changing the hostnames of the router & switch to be R1 and SW1

  1. Enter global configuration mode by issuing enable then configure terminal
  2. Enter hostname followed by the name you want to set on the device
  3. Repeat the for the other device

Configure and encrypted enable password of CCNA on both devices

  1. While inside global configuration mode, enter enable password CCNA
  2. Exit back to user exec mode with exit and re-enter with enable
  3. You will be prompted to enter a password (case sensitive)
  4. Repeat for the other device
  5. If we do show running-config we can see the password stored in plain text
  6. Encrypt the password by entering global config mode and running the command service password-encryption
  7. The password is now encrypted and not shown in plain text

Configure a more secure & encrypted password for your devices

  1. Enter global config mode and run the command enable secret Cisco
  2. Exit back to user exec mode with exit and re-enter with enable
  3. You will be prompted to enter a password, but this time it's the password Cisco
  4. The enable secrets overrides the enable password set on the device
  5. We can see when we show the running config that both the password and secret is enabled, but only hte enable secrets applies
  6. This enable secrets is stored as an MD5 hash and is more secure than the normal enable password encryption
  7. Save the running-config to startup config by running write alternatively you can run copy running-config startup-config