The National Security Agency (NSA) has published guidelines to help Ministry Defense (DoD or Department of Defense) and other system administrators to identify and mitigate security issues associated with the transition to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6 or Internet Protocol v6).
The IPv6 security guidelines highlight how many security holes can appear in networks that are new to IPv6 or in the early stages of a transition to IPv6.
New IPv6 networks are not yet mature settings and IPv6 tools, dual-stacked networks, which run on IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously, offer an increased attack surface.
"The Department of Defense will gradually transition from IPv4 to IPv6 over the next several years, and many DoD networks will be dual-stacked," said Neal Ziring, NSA's Cybersecurity Technical Director.
"It is important that DoD system administrators use these guidelines to identify and mitigate potential security issues as they add support for IPv6 to their networks."
Download CSI_IPV6_SECURITY_GUIDANCE.PDF