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Features
Smart Practices--Finding a Wireless System
4/1/2004
Boise State University, located in Idaho’s capital, provides unique opportunities
for students to live and learn in the center of government, business, arts,
high technology, and health care. The university wanted to offer its students
and faculty wireless Internet access throughout its 134-acre and 34 building
campus. The challenge was finding a wireless system that would handle authentication
seamlessly using the university’s existing Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication system used for the wired network.
The university already had an authentication system for the wired network and the university didn’t want to duplicate efforts. Connecting into the existing LDAP authentication system was one of the main criteria as the university evaluated several systems.The new security system also had to handle Boise State’s high traffic
demands and would need to scale easily to manage the load. The biggest challenge
was in the dorms—students introducing overloads or viruses into the network.
The university needed to implement the new system in the dorms to make sure
the users were authenticated.
Once Perfigo’s SecureSmart system was in place for evaluation, it was
able to check all traffic at the edge, reducing the load on the authentication
server. The university believes that open box software is optimal. The university
could crack open [or hack into] the [other vendor’s] box but the new system
could not be compromised.
The system protects Boise State’s data and prevents unauthorized access
by requiring wireless and wired network users to enter a valid user identification
and password. The server authenticates against the university’s LDAP database,
and allows or denies access accordingly. After verification, users are able
to fully utilize the local network and Boise State’s Internet connection.
It provides a centralized, single point of management for the university’s
wired and wireless networks and SecureSmart deployment.
Solid Security for High-Traffic Network
Wireless access is available in every building on every floor (the university has more than 50 Cisco access points), except in dormitories, where high-speed network connections exist. Public access computers are also available across campus at student unions and in the dorms. SecureSmart is able to handle wireless, which they expected, but also the wired traffic, which is significantly heavier. Even streaming media passes through without causing a bottleneck.Viruses and worms add significant costs to budgets in terms of resources, time,
and revenue lost, in the case of a network being brought down. Furthermore,
wireless devices are a bigger threat than wired devices because viruses can
be obtained anywhere and brought back to the network to infect other devices.
Boise State is in the process of implementing Perfigo’s CleanMachines
and virus and worm prevention system, which prevents the spread of viruses from
mobile devices that log onto its network until they are verified as virus-free.
The system stops any potential for damage at the user edge by determining which
users are at risk, preventing full network access, delivering updates to them,
and enabling users to fix their own devices rather than assigning costly resources
to do it. Once the user has applied the up-to-date virus protection and other
necessary patches, they are allowed onto the network.
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