Enabling or disabling HA heartbeat encryption and authentication
You can enable HA heartbeat encryption and authentication to encrypt and authenticate HA heartbeat packets. HA heartbeat packets should be encrypted and authenticated if the cluster interfaces that send HA heartbeat packets are also connected to your networks.
If HA heartbeat packets are not encrypted the cluster password and changes to the cluster configuration could be exposed and an attacker may be able to sniff HA packets to get cluster information. Enabling HA heartbeat message authentication prevents an attacker from creating false HA heartbeat messages. False HA heartbeat messages could affect the stability of the cluster.
HA heartbeat encryption and authentication are disabled by default. Enabling HA encryption and authentication could reduce cluster performance. Use the following CLI command to enable HA heartbeat encryption and authentication.
config system ha
set authentication enable
set encryption enable
end
HA authentication and encryption uses AES-128 for encryption and SHA1 for authentication.