Overview

Today’s networks are vulnerable to more than just cable infrastructure failures and power outages. Because of the ubiquity of Internet connectivity, strategic partnerships, and the dependence on electronic information coming from external entities, organizations must create a well-defined security posture for their networks that spells out possible vulnerabilities, defines the threats, and describes the countermeasures that should be implemented to mitigate the associated risks. In this module, a number of network security vulnerabilities are discussed, and actual threat types are defined. Cisco Systems has implemented a number of device level countermeasures to defend the individual devices as well as the entire network from security threats. This module describes some measures to secure Cisco’s multilayer switches based on Cisco’s SAFE blueprint.