Add a RADIUS External Authentication Object for Security Cloud Control

Add a RADIUS server to support external users for device management.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose System (system gear icon) > Users.

Step 2

Click External Authentication.

Step 3

Click Add icon (add icon) Add External Authentication Object.

Step 4

Set the Authentication Method to RADIUS.

Step 5

Enter a Name and optional Description.

Step 6

For the Primary Server, enter a Host Name/IP Address.

Step 7

(Optional) Change the Port from the default.

Step 8

Enter the RADIUS Secret Key.

Step 9

(Optional) Enter the Backup Server parameters.

Step 10

(Optional) Enter RADIUS-Specific Parameters.

  1. Enter the Timeout in seconds before retrying the primary server, between 1 and 1024. The default is 30.

  2. Enter the Retries before rolling over to the backup server. The default is 3.

  3. In the fields that correspond to user roles, enter the name of each user or identifying attribute-value pair that should be assigned to those roles.

    Separate usernames and attribute-value pairs with commas.

    Example:

    If you know all users who should be Security Analysts have the value Analyst for their User-Category attribute, you can enter User-Category=Analyst in the Security Analyst field to grant that role to those users.

    Example:

    To grant the Administrator role to the users jsmith and jdoe, enter jsmith, jdoe in the Administrator field.

    Example:

    To grant the Maintenance User role to all users with a User-Category value of Maintenance, enter User-Category=Maintenance in the Maintenance User field.

  4. Select the Default User Role for users that do not belong to any of the specified groups.

If you change a user's role, you must save/deploy the changed external authentication object and also remove the user from the Users screen. The user will be re-added automatically the next time they log in.

Step 11

(Optional) Define Custom RADIUS Attributes.

If your RADIUS server returns values for attributes not included in the dictionary file in /etc/radiusclient/, and you plan to use those attributes to set roles for users with those attributes, you need to define those attributes. You can locate the attributes returned for a user by looking at the user’s profile on your RADIUS server.

  1. Enter an Attribute Name.

    When you define an attribute, you provide the name of the attribute, which consists of alphanumeric characters. Note that words in an attribute name should be separated by dashes rather than spaces.

  2. Enter the Attribute ID as an integer.

    The attribute ID should be an integer and should not conflict with any existing attribute IDs in the etc/radiusclient/dictionary file.

  3. Choose the Attribute Type from the drop-down list.

    You also specify the type of attribute: string, IP address, integer, or date.

  4. Click Add to add the custom attribute.

When you create a RADIUS authentication object, a new dictionary file for that object is created on the device in the /var/sf/userauth directory. Any custom attributes you add are added to the dictionary file.

Example:

If a RADIUS server is used on a network with a Cisco router, you might want to use the Ascend-Assign-IP-Pool attribute to grant a specific role to all users logging in from a specific IP address pool. Ascend-Assign-IP-Pool is an integer attribute that defines the address pool where the user is allowed to log in, with the integer indicating the number of the assigned IP address pool.

To declare that custom attribute, you create a custom attribute with an attribute name of Ascend-IP-Pool-Definition, an attribute ID of 218, and an attribute type of integer.

You could then enter Ascend-Assign-IP-Pool=2 in the Security Analyst (Read Only) field to grant read-only security analyst rights to all users with an Ascend-IP-Pool-Definition attribute value of 2.

Step 12

(Optional) In the CLI Access Filter area Administrator CLI Access User List field, enter the user names that should have CLI access, separated by commas.

Make sure that these usernames match usernames on the RADIUS server. The names must be Linux-valid usernames:

  • Maximum 32 alphanumeric characters, plus period (.), hyphen (-), and underscore (_)

  • All lowercase

  • Cannot start with hyphen (-); cannot be all numbers; cannot include at sign (@) or slash (/)

To prevent RADIUS authentication of CLI access, leave the field blank.

Note

Users with CLI access can gain Linux shell access with the expert command. Linux shell users can obtain root privileges, which can present a security risk. Make sure that you restrict the list of users with CLI or Linux shell access.

Note

Remove any internal users that have the same user name as users included in the shell access filter. For the management center, the only internal CLI user is admin, so do not also create an admin external user.

Step 13

(Optional) Click Test to test management center connectivity to the RADIUS server.

Step 14

(Optional) You can also enter Additional Test Parameters to test user credentials for a user who should be able to authenticate: enter a User Name and Password, and then click Test.

Tip

If you mistype the name or password of the test user, the test fails even if the server configuration is correct. To verify that the server configuration is correct, click Test without entering user information in the Additional Test Parameters field first. If that succeeds, supply a user name and password to test with the specific user.

Example:

To test if you can retrieve the JSmith user credentials at the Example company, enter JSmith and the correct password.

Step 15

Click Save.

Examples

Simple User Role Assignments

The following figure illustrates a sample RADIUS login authentication object for a server running Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) with an IP address of 10.10.10.98 on port 1812. No backup server is defined.

The following example shows RADIUS-specific parameters, including the timeout (30 seconds) and number of failed retries before the Secure Firewall System attempts to contact the backup server, if any.

This example illustrates important aspects of RADIUS user role configuration:

Users ewharton and gsand are granted web interface Administrative access.

The user cbronte is granted web interface Maintenance User access.

The user jausten is granted web interface Security Analyst access.

The user ewharton can log into the device using a CLI account.

The following graphic depicts the role configuration for the example:

Roles for Users Matching an Attribute-Value Pair

You can use an attribute-value pair to identify users who should receive a particular user role. If the attribute you use is a custom attribute, you must define the custom attribute.

The following figure illustrates the role configuration and custom attribute definition in a sample RADIUS login authentication object for the same ISE server as in the previous example.

In this example, however, the MS-RAS-Version custom attribute is returned for one or more of the users because a Microsoft remote access server is in use. Note the MS-RAS-Version custom attribute is a string. In this example, all users logging in to RADIUS through a Microsoft v. 5.00 remote access server should receive the Security Analyst (Read Only) role, so you enter the attribute-value pair of MS-RAS-Version=MSRASV5.00 in the Security Analyst (Read Only) field.