How to Enable Secret password on CISCO Switch

Enable password uses a weak encryption algorithm. To overcome this situation, we use enable secret password on the device. When both enable password and enable secret password are configured, enable secret password is used to move from User EXEC mode to Privileged EXEC mode.

Switch#config t
Switch(config)#enable secret 123456ABC

At this point enable secret password is encrypted by default but the enable password is not encrypted:

Switch#sh running-config
enable secret 5 $1$mERr$quAFREnXAiXqp0qlK/h8d/
enable password ABCDABCD

Now to encrypt all the passwords in the configuration file, we can use “service password-encryption” command.

Switch#config t
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
Switch(config)#service password-encryption
Switch(config)#end
Switch#

To See the configuration we did

Switch#sh run
Building configuration…
hostname Switch
!
enable secret 5 $1$mERr$quAFREnXAiXqp0qlK/h8d/
enable password 7 08006E6D2D38273436