What to do when port-security is not enough....

[darren-carr]

Hi All,

Well after thinking I had secured my desktop environment something occured to me which now means that I am not happy with the security!!!

My typical access port is configured as such:

interface GigabitEthernet0/28
description x x x x
switchport mode access
switchport port-security
switchport port-security mac-address sticky
switchport port-security mac-address sticky 0024.1d0a.0840
no cdp enable
spanning-tree portfast
spanning-tree bpduguard enable
end

Now this satisfies security in some way i.e. if somebody is to patch a PC into the wall port with a different MAC address the port will shutdown. However, as I was able to prove, when I adjust the MAC address of my laptop (to the one that is used above) then patch it in I get access to the network, and no warning is sent. Obviously this is totally unsatisfactory. I appreciate most users wouldn't know how to do this (change a MAC address) but I always like to plan for the worst case scenario. Doing a bit of looking around I see people are making use of 802.1x. Does anybody have any experience in deploying such a method? or have access to any best practices, etc?

Cheers

Darren

[Hitesh Vinzoda]

Hi Darren,

I had got a chance to design the implentation of 802.1x for 5000 users but i left the organization before we can deploy it. I went through the following presentations provided by Cisco for deploying the 802.1x. It also provides phase by phase implementation of dot1x and issues that can be handled during implementation. Checkout the last presentation first.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6638/prod_presentation_list.html

Hope this helps

Hitesh Vinzoda

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