Details

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 of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.

Solution

Configure the Cisco ASA to enforce password complexity by requiring a minimum 15-character password length as shown in the example below.

ASA(config)# password-policy minimum-length 15

Supportive Information

The following resource is also helpful.

• https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_ASA_STIG.zip

This security hardening control applies to the following category of controls within NIST 800-53: Identification and Authentication.This control applies to the following type of system Cisco.

References

• 800-53|IA-5(1)(a)
• CAT|II
• CCI|CCI-000205
• Rule-ID|SV-239914r666105_rule
• STIG-ID|CASA-ND-000490
• Vuln-ID|V-239914

Source

• Tenable.com/audits