encrypting snmp community strings in IOS configuration

[ghoward]

Is there any way to encrypt SNMP community strings in IOS configurations similar to the NTP keys or enable passwords?

[henniae]

As far as I know there is not way to do this for SNMP V1 and V2C. It would be nice if IOS allowed you to encrypt them in the config as an added measure of security, but it does not. However when they get transmitted over the wire they are not encrypted so anyone with a sniffer could see them.

Alan

[nhabib]

You are correct, there is no way to encrypt the community strings in the configs. For additional security, one must use SNMP v3.