What Is The Current Version Of Tacacs?

What Is The Current Version Of Tacacs?

TACACS+ is the current version of the TACACS. Today, let us discuss the Tacacs in detail. The tacacs is the type of application for the security framework. Along with this let us also learn about the tacacs and the radius difference.

Before we discuss this, let us first learn about the AAA framework., we all know that the AAA stands for authentication, authorization, and accounting. It is simply like a fundamental security framework in order to control user access in a particular network.

Here, we determine the access levels or users’ privileges on the basis of some of the user identities and also by keeping track of all the user activities.

Here, we consider that authentication is the first component. Let us take an example to understand this in detail. Here when it asks the user who they are, the user must need some of the credentials in order to get proved, and after the identification is get verified then go into some of the special privileges. This is like the second component, which is nothing but authorization.

The authorization is all about that what all the resources that we can be accessed and all the tasks it will perform. And the last component of the AAA is accounting. This accounting is nothing but that can able to keep the track of all the activities which we are going to perform. It will also include what are the resources that are being used and how long it actually being used.

Here we collect the data, all the data that we get collected here will be used for many different purposes like monitoring, billing controlling, and so on.

Now, let us know what actually the TACACS is? The term TACACS stands for terminal access controller the access control system. Here, when we use TACACS+ then it can be referred to as the updated version of the TACACS. Similar to the radius, the TACACS will also use the AAA framework that can able to provide centralized access in a network.

Normally, the radius was actually designed to authenticate and log remote network users. But it is different from the TACACS. The TACACS is normally mainly used for administrator access for the network devices like routers and switches.

And the TACACS+ should be able to be deployed on a fully trusted network. Here, we do not allow any direct access through any of the non-trusted or semi-trusted networks.

Now, let us know actually the difference between the radius and the TACACS+. The TACACS+ normally uses the transport layer of the protocol while the radius uses the user datagram protocol. Normally, the radius will use only the two peers of the UDP port numbers and the TACACS will use the port number 49. In the radius, only the password gets encrypted which is less secure.

whereas TACACA+ it uses encryption to the whole packet by including the whole user name and the password. It can also able to authenticate the network devices.