Deployment Guide

FIPS Cryptography

Dell Networking OS supports federal information processing standard (FIPS) cryptography.

This chapter describes how to enable FIPS cryptography requirements on Dell Networking platforms. This feature provides cryptographic

algorithms conforming to various FIPS standards published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory

agency of the US Department of Commerce. FIPS mode is also validated for numerous platforms to meet the FIPS-140-2 standard for a

software-based cryptographic module.

NOTE: For the Dell Networking OS version 8.3.12.0, only the SSH and SCP copy features use FIPS Cryptographic mode to

secure management interface user sessions and le transfers. Other features that use cryptographic algorithms do not, or

cannot, use FIPS mode. You must congure the management interfaces to limit access to/from the system to SSH alone.

Topics:

• Preparing the System

• Enabling FIPS Mode

• Generating Host-Keys

• Monitoring FIPS Mode Status

• Disabling FIPS Mode

Preparing the System

Before you enable FIPS mode, Dell Networking recommends making the following changes to your system.

1 Disable the Telnet server (only use secure shell [SSH] to access the system).

2 Disable the FTP server (only use secure copy [SCP] to transfer les to and from the system).

3 Attach a secure, standalone host to the console port for the FIPS conguration to use.

Enabling FIPS Mode

To enable or disable FIPS mode, use the console port.

Secure the host attached to the console port against unauthorized access. Any attempts to enable or disable FIPS mode from a virtual

terminal session are denied.

When you enable FIPS mode, the following actions are taken:

• If enabled, the SSH server is disabled.

• All open SSH and Telnet sessions, as well as all SCP and FTP le transfers, are closed.

• Any existing host keys (both RSA and RSA1) are deleted from system memory and NVRAM storage.

• FIPS mode is enabled.

• If you enable the SSH server when you enter the fips mode enable command, it is re-enabled for version 2 only.

• If you re-enable the SSH server, a new RSA host key-pair is generated automatically. You can also manually create this key-pair

using the crypto key generate command.

FIPS Cryptography 305