An emergency-management office must harden VTY access the same way on every Catalyst access stack before a weekend cutover. Which practice best delivers consistent management-plane access without turning each stack into a full AAA redesign?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Think of VTY lines like the office’s locked side door—every building should use the same lock pattern. A shared management ACL plus SSH-only access keeps the door usable for ops but closed to random visitors. Doing that once as a template beats reinventing AAA on every stack the night before cutover.
Full Explanation
Consistent Catalyst management hardening starts with identical VTY policy: restrict source networks with a management ACL, prefer SSH over cleartext Telnet, and keep local/enable authentication adequate for the cutover window. Template-driven uniformity reduces one-off drift across access stacks. Full AAA (TACACS+/RADIUS) is valuable later, but this item targets switch-administration hygiene—not an identity-server redesign. Leaving VTYs open or enabling Telnet expands the management-plane attack surface without helping operational consistency.