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Difficulty: MediumNetwork Device Hardening Best Practices

A network technician is hardening remote administrative access on a core router deployed at an enterprise edge site. To comply with security baseline requirements, all remote management sessions must use strong payload encryption, and inactive administrative sessions must automatically terminate after five minutes. Which configuration strategy correctly fulfills these hardening requirements?

  1. Enable SSH version 2 for administrative access and configure an exec-timeout of 5 minutes on all VTY lines.Answer
  2. B
    Enable Telnet over TCP port 22 and configure an exec-timeout of 5 minutes on the local console port.
  3. C
    Retain default VLAN 1 as the native VLAN across 802.1Q trunk interfaces and monitor session inactivity using SNMPv2c.
  4. D
    Configure HTTP access across all VLAN broadcast domains and remove VTY access control lists to prevent connection timeouts.

Answer

The correct option specifies configuring SSH version 2 for administrative access and setting an exec-timeout of 5 minutes on all VTY lines.
Enabling SSH version 2 ensures that all interactive remote management traffic and authentication credentials are encrypted end-to-end. Applying an execution timeout (exec-timeout) of 5 minutes directly to all VTY lines ensures that inactive remote management connections are automatically closed, mitigating the risk of unauthorized access via hijacked or unattended sessions.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the encryption requirement for remote management plane hardening.
SSH version 2 (SSHv2) provides secure, encrypted remote terminal sessions, whereas legacy protocols like Telnet transmit credentials and data in cleartext.
Hardening best practices mandate disabling plaintext management protocols like Telnet and HTTP in favor of encrypted alternatives like SSHv2 and HTTPS.
2
Identify the mechanism for automatically terminating idle administrative sessions.
Applying an `exec-timeout 5 0` command (5 minutes, 0 seconds) directly to virtual terminal (VTY) lines forces the operating system to close inactive sessions.
Unattended active administrative sessions present a major security risk for unauthorized local or remote access.

Key Concept

Management Plane Hardening via SSH and VTY Session Timeouts
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Topics

Network Device Hardening Best Practices

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