Cisco Systems 8.6 manual Best Practices-Requirements and Recommendations

Chapter 1 An Overview of the Cisco Unified IP Phones

Understanding Security Features for Cisco Unified IP Phones

•Cisco Catalyst Switch (or other third-party switch)—The switch must support 802.1X, so it can act as the authenticator and pass the messages between the phone and the authentication server. When the exchange completes, the switch grants or denies the phone access to the network.

Best Practices—Requirements and Recommendations

•Enable 802.1X Authentication—If you want to use the 802.1X standard to authenticate Cisco Unified IP Phones, be sure that you have properly configured the other components before enabling it on the phone. See 802.1X Authentication and Status, page 4-44for more information.

•Configure PC Port—The 802.1X standard does not take into account the use of VLANs and thus recommends that only a single device should authenticate to a specific switch port. However, some switches (including Cisco Catalyst switches) support multi-domain authentication. The switch configuration determines whether you can connect a PC to the phone’s PC port.

–Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multi-domain authentication, you can enable the PC port and connect a PC to it. In this case, Cisco Unified IP Phones support proxy EAPOL-Logoff to monitor the authentication exchanges between the switch and the attached PC. For more information about IEEE 802.1X support on the Cisco Catalyst switches, see the Cisco Catalyst switch configuration guides at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/tsd_products_support_series_home. html

–Disabled—If the switch does not support multiple 802.1X-compliant devices on the same port, you should disable the PC Port when 802.1X authentication is enabled. See Security Configuration Menu, page 4-32for more information. If you do not disable this port and subsequently attempt to attach a PC to it, the switch will deny network access to both the phone and the PC.

•Configure Voice VLAN—Because the 802.1X standard does not account for VLANs, you should configure this setting based on the switch support.

–Enabled—If you are using a switch that supports multi-domain authentication, you can continue to use the voice VLAN.

–Disabled—If the switch does not support multi-domain authentication, disable the Voice VLAN and consider assigning the port to the native VLAN. See Security Configuration Menu, page 4-32for more information.

•Enter MD5 Shared Secret—If you disable 802.1X authentication or perform a factory reset on the phone, the previously configured MD5 shared secret is deleted. See 802.1X Authentication and Status, page 4-44for more information.

	Cisco Unified IP Phone Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.6 (SCCP and SIP)
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