Designing Access Controls

Choose the Access Control Methods

If you have a large number of users who are technically unsophisticated, you may need to factor in some training if you select 802.1X as the access control method. On the other hand, if you have a large number of highly knowledgeable users (such as university students), you will probably want to rule out less-secure access methods and focus on 802.1X combined with strict application and data access controls.

 

Table 3-6relates users’ technical knowledge to access control methods.

 

Table 3-6.

Access Control Method by User Sophistication Level

 

 

 

 

 

MAC-Auth

Web-Auth

802.1X

 

 

 

 

User sophistication

Low

Medium-low

Medium

needed

 

 

 

 

User interaction

None

Enter user credentials

Enter user credentials

 

 

 

• Configure a supplicant in

 

 

 

 

some cases

 

 

 

Download and install

 

 

 

 

supplicant in some cases

 

 

 

 

 

Incidentally, technical knowledge may be even more important as you consider endpoint integrity checking. (See “Choose the Endpoint Integrity Deployment Method” on page 3-51.)

Example

The PCU network administrators have selected the access control methods shown in Table 3-7,based only on their evaluation of user sophistication. They believe that in public zones, such as the plaza and the library, user sophistication will vary widely. (The plaza has been identified as a public wireless zone, and the library, a public wired and wireless zone.) Therefore, Web-Auth is probably the best solution for these zones.

Most of the private zones are used mainly by students, whose computer skills are fairly good to excellent. They should have no problems configuring an 802.1X supplicant.

There is one exception, however—the administration building. In this private wired zone, many users have only basic computer skills. Some of them might have problems configuring an 802.1X supplicant—at least initially. The PCU network administrators must document this exception, so they can weigh this factor against others (such as risk tolerance) for this particular zone. If the PCU network administrators ultimately select 802.1X for this zone (after they weigh all the factors), they must either provide the IT resources to configure the supplicants on behalf of users, or they must provide some training.

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