Section 5. AAA Configuration on the Cisco ASA

Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), pronounced “triple A,” are three services common to most Cisco devices. They are core networking services and are related to individual users whom access a system.

The first thing you want to do is authenticate your users to see whom they are and to ensure they are allowed to connect to the system. After you have authenticated the users, you can then authorize them to perform specific activities (so that all users do not have the same access rights on the system). You might also want to enable accounting to record what your users are doing on the system; you can log such items as login and logout times and any commands entered if they are connected in-line to a device.