Layer 2 Attacks & Mitigation Techniques

Atacks against the Layer 2 LAN infrastructure are described in the table and are discussed in more detail later in this module.

The table provides an overview of Cisco solutions to help mitigate Layer 2 attacks.

These Layer 2 solutions will not be effective if the management protocols are not secured. For example, the management protocols Syslog, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and most other common protocols are insecure; therefore, the following strategies are recommended:

• Always use secure variants of these protocols such as SSH, Secure Copy Protocol (SCP), Secure FTP (SFTP), and Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS).
• Consider using out-of-band management network to manage devices.
• Use a dedicated management VLAN where nothing but management traffic resides.
• Use ACLs to filter unwanted access.