HP Discover Effective Methods for Designing Access Controls with Access Control Software

Designing Access Controls

Choose the Access Control Methods

Choose the Access Control Methods

As outlined in Chapter 1: “Access Control Concepts,” there are three access control methods:

■MAC Authentication (MAC-Auth)

■Web Authentication (Web-Auth)

■802.1X

Each method has advantages and disadvantages, as Table 3-1 shows.

	Table 3-1.	Advantages and Disadvantages of Access Control Methods
Access Control	Advantages	Disadvantages	Security Level
Method

MAC-Auth (local and	• Control over which	•	Not scalable
RADIUS)	endpoints connect to the	•	High administrative
	network		overhead
	• No software on the endpoint	•	Susceptible to
	• In the wireless world, easy		spoofing—fairly easy to
	to combine with other		spoof authorized MAC
	security		address

Low

•Low-to-medium effort to crack

•Prevents casual, unauthorized users

Web-Auth	•	Ideal for public zones
	• Control over which users
		access the network
	•	No configuration
		required—especially for
		wireless endpoints
	•	No 802.1X supplicant
		required
	•	Centralized user
		authentication

•Hardware-based, rather than user-based, authentication

•No encryption by default

•RADIUS server required

•Web browser interface (user interaction) required—no authentication of headless devices

•No seamless roaming for wireless networks

Medium

•Medium-to-high effort to crack

•Prevents more diligent attacks than MAC-Auth does

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