Virtual Private Network (VPN) Security Requirements Guide
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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The VPN Gateway must generate a log record or an SNMP trap that can be forwarded as an alert to, at a minimum, the SCA and ISSO, of all log failure events where the detection and/or prevention function is unable to write events to either local storage or the centralized server.
It is critical for the appropriate personnel to be aware if a system is at risk of failing to process audit logs as required. Without a real-time alert, security personnel may be unaware of an impe...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway must disable split-tunneling for remote clients VPNs.
Split tunneling would in effect allow unauthorized external connections, making the system more vulnerable to attack and to exfiltration of organizational information. A VPN hardware or software c...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway and Client must be configured to protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information.
Without protection of the transmitted information, confidentiality and integrity may be compromised as unprotected communications can be intercepted and either read or altered. This requirement al...Rule High Severity -
The VPN Gateway must generate log records when successful and/or unsuccessful VPN connection attempts occur.
Without generating log records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an inci...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway must use a FIPS-validated cryptographic module to implement encryption services for unclassified information requiring confidentiality.
FIPS 140-2 precludes the use of invalidated cryptography for the cryptographic protection of sensitive or valuable data within Federal systems. Unvalidated cryptography is viewed by NIST as providi...Rule Medium Severity -
The IPsec VPN Gateway must use Internet Key Exchange (IKE) for IPsec VPN Security Associations (SAs).
Without IKE, the SPI is manually specified for each security association. IKE peers will negotiate the encryption algorithm and authentication or hashing methods as well as generate the encryption ...Rule High Severity -
For site-to-site, VPN Gateway must be configured to store only cryptographic representations of pre-shared Keys (PSKs).
PSKs need to be protected at all times, and encryption is the standard method for protecting passwords. If PSKs are not encrypted, they can be plainly read and easily compromised. Use of passwords ...Rule Medium Severity -
The IPsec VPN must use AES256 or greater encryption for the IPsec proposal to protect the confidentiality of remote access sessions.
Without confidentiality protection mechanisms, unauthorized individuals may gain access to sensitive information via a remote access session. Remote access is access to DOD nonpublic information s...Rule High Severity -
The VPN remote access server must be configured use cryptographic algorithms approved by NSA to protect NSS for remote access to a classified network.
Use of weak or untested encryption algorithms undermines the purposes of utilizing encryption to protect data. The VPN gateway must implement cryptographic modules adhering to the higher standards ...Rule High Severity -
The VPN Gateway must validate certificates used for Transport Layer Security (TLS) functions by performing RFC 5280-compliant certification path validation.
A certificate's certification path is the path from the end entity certificate to a trusted root certification authority (CA). Certification path validation is necessary for a relying party to make...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway must employ organization-defined controls by type of denial of service (DoS) to achieve the DoS objective.
DoS events may occur due to a variety of internal and external causes, such as an attack by an adversary or a lack of planning to support organizational needs with respect to capacity and bandwidth...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway must establish organization-defined alternate communications paths for system operations organizational command and control.
An incident, whether adversarial- or nonadversarial-based, can disrupt established communications paths used for system operations and organizational command and control. Alternate communications p...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway must configure OCSP to ensure revoked machine certificates are prohibited from establishing an allowed session.
Situations may arise in which the certificate issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) may need to be revoked before the lifetime of the certificate expires. For example, the certificate is known to ...Rule Medium Severity -
The VPN Gateway providing authentication intermediary services must only accept end entity certificates (user or machine) issued by DOD PKI or DOD-approved PKI Certification Authorities (CAs) for the establishment of VPN sessions.
Untrusted Certificate Authorities (CAs) can issue certificates, but they may be issued by organizations or individuals that seek to compromise DOD systems or by organizations with insufficient secu...Rule Medium Severity
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