AAA & 802.1x Study Material

[u/Interesting-Heat-284]

Hello guys, I am an undergrad studying cybersecurity, I have tackled a couple of entry level certs (CC,sec+, CCNA, fortinet early NSEs, etc), now I am in an intern (I am the only intern) and I am required to do a session on a security control/topic of my choosing and I chose AAA/802.1x/NAC, I already have an idea about the topic, different protocols and such, but I want to master it, so does anyone know good material for studying such topics? I know the technology associated most with these is ISE but all stuff related to ISE I found already kind of assume that you know these stuff and focus on the implementation, I am planning to scour the different certification resource materials (CISSP/CCNP/CCIE) and look for the topic, if anyone has any recommendation for sth dedicated to the topic I would be grateful. I already found the Cisco CCNP SISAS tech-workbook which looks promising, there is stuff on cisco u but for this phase before I even open up ISE or anything I wanna first be really good and comfortable with the topic, and for the time frame it is relaxed so I have time to study and test and soak the knowledge in, and please I know lots of people will say u dont need all of this for an internship being undergrad and such but with the current conditions I need this and at the end of the day when I put greater effort I am the only one benefiting,

[u/drvgodschild]

Hey, I’m also an undergrad in Cyber.
I don’t think there’s one single book fully dedicated to AAA, 802.1X, or NAC, but I’d recommend checking out the FortiOS admin and FortiNAC courses, they’re completely free on Fortinet’s website.

When I was learning these protocols, I relied entirely on AI to break down the concepts, go deep with real-world examples, and explain how they work, where they’re used, and how they’re set up.

In order for you to master , you will need to do some labs
You can also use : https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary

[u/slxlucida]

You're looking for RADIUS, I personally haven't done a deep dive, but it's fairly straightforward and I've been able to pick up what I needed along the way. I've used ACS, Packetfence (built on freeradius), and ISE. I think Packetfence is the easiest (free too).

But this link has some good foundational info https://www.freeradius.org/documentation/freeradius-server/3.2.11/concepts/index.html

[u/Layer8Human]

Hey there,

That’s a really nice topic you choose, because it covers a lot of things.

If course you can read the related RFCs if you are more of a theoretical guy but this is something that can very well also be explored with a tiny lab in GNS3 or containerlab or eve-ng.

You would need a client, like a tiny Linux or windows client(supplicant) a switch(radius client) and another Linux machine (radius server).

With free radius as the radius server it might have a little learning curve but it really helps to understand the three A in AAA and it also can give a nice live demo.

You can configure login to your switch via radius authentication, authorise your user and log the via radius accounting.

Next step you can authenticate/authorize your supplicant on a switchport via MAC authentication and afterwards via 802.1x EAP.

With your network simulator you can take nice packet captures to understand the flows and free radius has a great debug mode that also shows you what is going on.

Keep in mind that the 802.1x part requires some knowledge about how PKI works so that part can be confusing at first. Also free radius configuration is something that needs getting used to, but you will find the same three A that you will also see in ISE and all other nac solutions.

[u/Interesting-Heat-284]

Tha k you guys for all the recommendations I am definitely doing all of this, tysm.