Security: Secure Sensitive Data Management
SSD Properties
370 Cisco 350, 350X and 550X Series Managed Switches, Firmware Release 2.4, ver 0.4
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After a device is reset to the factory default, its local passphrase is reset to the default 
passphrase. As a result, the device will be not able to decrypt any sensitive data encrypted 
based on a user-defined passphrase entered from a management session (GUI/CLI), or in any 
configuration file with restricted mode, including the files created by the device itself before it 
is reset to factory default. This remains until the device is manually reconfigured with the user-
defined passphrase, or learns the user-defined passphrase from a configuration file. 
Configuration File Integrity Control 
A user can protect a configuration file from being tampered or modified by creating the 
configuration file with Configuration File Integrity Control. It is recommended that 
Configuration File Integrity Control be enabled when a device uses a user-defined passphrase 
with Unrestricted Configuration File Passprhase Control.
!
CAUTION Any modification made to a configuration file that is integrity protected is considered 
tampering. 
A device determines whether the integrity of a configuration file is protected by examining the 
File Integrity Control command in the file's SSD Control block. If a file is integrity protected 
but a device finds the integrity of the file is not intact, the device rejects the file. Otherwise, the 
file is accepted for further processing.
A device checks for the integrity of a text-based configuration file when the file is downloaded 
or copied to the Startup Configuration file. 
Read Mode
Each session has a Read mode. This determines how sensitive data appears. The Read mode 
can be either Plaintext, in which case sensitive data appears as regular text, or Encrypted, in 
which sensitive data appears in its encrypted form.