Cisco 500 Series - Local Passphrase; Configuration File Passphrase Control

Security: Secure Sensitive Data Management
SSD Properties
569 Cisco 500 Series Stackable Managed Switch Administration Guide
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• Character Classes—The passphrase must have at least one upper case
character, one lower case character, one numeric character, and one special
character e.g. #,$.
Default and User-defined Passphrases
All devices come with a default, out-of-the box passphrase that is transparent to
users. The default passphrase is never displayed in the configuration file or in the
CLI/GUI.
If better security and protection are desired, an administrator should configure
SSD on a device to use a user-defined passphrase instead of the default
passphrase. A user-defined passphrase should be treated as a well-guard secret,
so that the security of the sensitive data on the device is not compromised.
A user-defined passphrase can be configured manually in plain text. It can also be
derived from a configuration file. (See Sensitive Data Zero-Touch Auto
Configuration). A device always displays user-defined passphrases encrypted.
Local Passphrase
A device maintains a local passphrase which is the passphrase of its Running
Configuration. SSD normally performs encryption and decryption of sensitive data
with the key generated from the local passphrase.
The local passphrase can be configured to be either the default passphrase or a
user-defined passphrase. By default, the local passphrase and default
passphrase are identical. It can be changed by administrative actions from either
the Command Line Interface (if available) or the web-based interface. It is
automatically changed to the passphrase in the startup configuration file, when the
startup configuration becomes the running configuration of the device. When a
device is reset to factory default, the local passphrase is reset to the default
passphrase.
Configuration File Passphrase Control
File passphrase control provides additional protection for a user-defined
passphrase, and the sensitive data that are encrypted with the key generated
from the user-defined passphrase, in text-based configuration files.
The following are the existing passphrase control modes: