You work as a network administrator for a college located in your local city. Next door to the college is a new gated community. The residents have been moving in over the last few months. The college is running a converged network. The services that are present on the infrastructure include the phone system that all staff and faculty use to make calls (voice network). The data for students and faculty are also present on the infrastructure. The infrastructure includes a student-accessible wireless environment. You have gotten numerous complaints about call quality. Complaints have included the following: It has been intermittent and very hard to track down the issue. The trouble report states that the call quality is poor and that calls are breaking up. It was also stated that the overall network performance is very bad, and it started a few months ago but is progressively getting worse. It takes a long time to access any files or the Internet. About 2 months ago, you implemented a network monitoring solution. You decided to check the logs as a result of a call you received from your CIO. The president of the college was on an important phone call and was not able to communicate as a result of the call quality. A review of your performance monitor logs revealed an enormous amount of traffic on the network. This excess network traffic was generated from the wireless LAN. Network traffic was destined for P2P (peer-to-peer) Web sites for movie and music downloads. The logs further reveal very high traffic volume when the students, staff, and faculty were off campus. You just remembered that the university did not have a wireless access control solution in place. It appears that unauthorized usage of the wireless network is generating this traffic that is greatly affecting network performance. You reported this finding to the CIO, and she needs a resolution.
Assignment Deliverable Research and identify an enterprise wireless access control solution.
Based on your research, write a report of 1–2 pages for your boss on your solution to the above stated issues
. Explain how security mechanisms were employed.
The performance monitor logs revealed a huge amount of traffic on the existing network and with time, its worsening. The primary and foremost reason has been the movement of many residents in the area over the last few months. Also, unauthorized access to the network is adding to the woes. Its the need of the hour that an enterprise wireless access control solution be put on the shelf which curbs unauthorized network access and improves connectivity, speed and performance.
A Network Access control solution will support network visibility and access management through policy enforcement on different devices (Mobiles, Tablets, PCs) and the users of the corporate networks (People on campus). There is an upward growth of devices accessing the Campus network and most of those are not secure, thus compromising the network security. Its very important to have the tools which provide access control and compliance capabilities required to strengthen the network security infrastructure. A NAC system can deny access to devices which are non-compliant to the defined policy. When configured, it can also give restricted access to users, thus keeping insecure nodes from affecting the network.
Explaining the NAC on policy terms, the device requesting access
to the Campus' wireless network will not be permitted to access
anything unless it complies with a defined policy which will also
include anti-virus protection level. This will not allow users to
access web resources which are not secured, thus ensuring network
security and also blocking many sites for downloads, thus reducing
load on server.
However, some high-profile people on the campus (say, the Dean) can
be provided complete access, if needed. The configuration can be
done and the access will be given as per the profile of the
person.
Some Security Mechanisms with which we can achieve the desired results :
1. Encryption of traffic using 802.1X protocols (These provide
an authentication mechanism to user devices wishing to connect to a
Wireless network)
2. The network access to be controlled based on user, device and
application roles
3. Defining a policy not abiding by which, a person can't access
the network
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