Manual

AT-S62 User’s Guide
Section VII: Management Security 493
Basic Overview
Protecting your managed switches from unauthorized management
access is an important role for a network manager. Network operations
and security can be severely compromised should an intruder gain
access to critical switch information, such as a manager’s login username
and password, and use that information to alter a switch’s configuration
settings.
One means by which an intruder could covertly obtain critical switch
information is by monitoring network traffic with a network analyzer,
such as a sniffer, and capturing management packets from remote
Telnet or web browser management sessions. The payload in the
packets exchanged during remote management sessions is transmitted
in plaintext, which can be easily decyphered. The information garnered
from the management packets could enable an intruder to access a
switch.
One means of foiling this type assault is by encrypting the payload in the
packets exchanged during a remote management session between a
management workstation and a switch. Encryption makes the packets
unintelligible to an outside agent. Only the remote workstation and the
switch engaged in the management session are able to decode each
other’s packets.
The heart of encryption is the encryption key. The key converts plaintext
into encrypted text, and vice versa. A key consists of two separate keys: a
private key and a public key. Together they create a key pair.
The AT-S62 management software supports encryption for remote web
browser management sessions using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
protocol. Adding encryption to your web browser management sessions
involves creating one key pair and adding the public key of the key pair
to a certificate, a digital document stored on the switch. You can have
the switch create the certificate itself or you can have a public or private
certificate authority (CA) create it for you. For an overview of the steps to
adding encryption to your web browser management sessions, refer to
General Steps to Configuring the Web Server for Encryption on page
488.
The Telnet application protocol does not support encryption. To have
encryption when you remotely manage a switch using the menu
interface, you must first obtain a Secure Shell (SSH) protocol application.
SSH offers the same functionality as Telnet, but with encryption.