Chapter 10 Wireless Security Screen
10.3 What You Need To Know
User Authentication
Authentication is the process of verifying whether a wireless device is allowed to use the wireless network. You can make every user log in to the wireless network before they can use it. However, every device in the wireless network has to support IEEE 802.1x to do this.
For wireless networks, you can store the user names and passwords for each user in a RADIUS server. This is a server used in businesses more than in homes. If you do not have a RADIUS server, you cannot set up user names and passwords for your users.
Unauthorized wireless devices can still see the information that is sent in the wireless network, even if they cannot use the wireless network. Furthermore, there are ways for unauthorized wireless users to get a valid user name and password. Then, they can use that user name and password to use the wireless network.
You can configure up to 16 security profiles in your NWA. The following table shows the relative effectiveness of wireless security methods:.
Table 39 Wireless Security Levels
SECURITY | SECURITY TYPE | |
LEVEL | ||
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Least | Unique SSID (Default) | |
Secure |
| |
Unique SSID with Hide SSID Enabled | ||
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| MAC Address Filtering | |
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| WEP Encryption | |
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| IEEE802.1x EAP with RADIUS Server | |
| Authentication | |
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| WPA2 | |
Most Secure |
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The available security modes in your NWA are as follows:
•None. No data encryption.
•WEP. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption scrambles the data transmitted between the wireless stations and the access points to keep network communications private.
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