Configuring Security
Configuring DoS Protection
Cisco 220 Series Smart Switches Administration Guide Release 1.1.0.x 214
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Configuring DoS Protection
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a hacker attempt to make a device unavailable 
to its users. DoS attacks saturate the device with external communication 
requests, so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic. These attacks usually lead 
to a device CPU overload. 
The DoS protection feature is a set of predefined rules that protect the network 
from malicious attacks. The DoS Security Suite Settings enables activating the 
security suite. 
This section describes how to configure the DoS protection features and includes 
the following topics:
• Secure Core Technology (SCT)
• Default Configuration
• Configuring DoS Security Suite Settings
• Configuring SYN Protection
Secure Core Technology (SCT)
One method of resisting DoS attacks employed by the switch is the use of SCT. 
SCT is enabled by default on the switch and cannot be disabled.
The Cisco device is an advanced device that handles management traffic, 
protocol traffic and snooping traffic, in addition to end-user (TCP) traffic. SCT 
ensures that the switch receives and processes management and protocol traffic, 
no matter how much total traffic is received. This is done by rate-limiting TCP 
traffic to the CPU.
There are no interactions with other features.
SCT can be monitored on the Security > Denial of Service > Security Suite 
Settings page (by clicking the Details button).
Default Configuration
The DoS protection feature has the following defaults:
• The DoS protection feature is disabled on all ports by default.
• The DoS protection feature is enabled in security suite by default.