Personal or Enterprise Wi-Fi?

About this interactive

The safest wireless network is no wireless network, because everything sent over the air can be seen by anyone in range. Most businesses need wireless anyway, so they choose its security carefully. WEP and WPA are insecure today, WPA2 is better, and WPA3 is the best where devices support it. Each of those protocols offers two ways to authenticate. Personal mode uses a pre-shared key: you type in the key, and every device on the network uses the same one. It is simple, but if the key leaks, the whole network is exposed, everyone has to be given a new key, and you cannot tell users apart or cut off one person. Enterprise mode is 802.1X on the back end, the same supplicant, authenticator and authentication server as on a wired port, with the access point as the authenticator. Users sign in with their own credentials or a certificate, so each one can be identified and disabled on their own. To sort a card, ask whether everyone shares one key, or each user or device proves who it is.

What you'll learn

Choose personal mode (one pre-shared key) or enterprise mode (802.1X with credentials or certificates) for a wireless network from its needs
Explain the problems of a pre-shared key that enterprise mode solves: a leaked key exposes the whole network, and no one user can be cut off or told apart

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

4.1 Given a scenario, apply common security techniques to computing resources.

Key terms

Pre-Shared Key: A shared secret passphrase used for authentication in wireless networks and VPNs without requiring a dedicated authentication server. In WPA-Personal mode, the PSK is used to derive the Pairwise Master Key (PMK) for encrypting the wireless session.
802.1X: An IEEE standard for port-based network access control that requires devices to authenticate before gaining access to a wired or wireless network, using a supplicant, authenticator, and authentication server (typically RADIUS). It is the foundation of enterprise Wi-Fi security and wired port security using EAP methods.
Wi-Fi Protected Access 2: An IEEE 802.11i-compliant wireless security certification that mandates AES-based CCMP encryption, providing substantially stronger data protection than WPA's TKIP. WPA2 supports both Personal mode (pre-shared key) and Enterprise mode (802.1X/RADIUS authentication).
Wireless Access Point: A device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi.

Topics

Interactive Streak Sort

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