In a previous post we talked about what you need to know to keep in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) when you’ve got a wireless network – or, as it turns out, even if you don’t, because you still have to prove you don’t. In the way of follow-up, we talked to Chris Williams, a pre-sales systems engineer for Carousel Industries and one of the company’s wireless experts about what goes into meeting those compliance requirements and how to make the job easier. Outlining the PCI-DSS Requirements First let’s take a quick look at what… Continue Reading ›
Streamline Wireless PCI Compliance with Centralized, Automated Tools
May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Preparing K-12 Schools for the Wireless Onslaught
March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Colleges and universities have long had to deal with students bringing all sorts of devices to campus, and wanting to connect to the campus network – usually wirelessly. “Colleges were the original bring your own device test bed,” says Chris Williams, a systems engineer with Carousel Industries. Well now the movement is headed downstream to K-12 schools. Consider what’s happening at Burlington High School in Burlington, Mass. As a story from the Burlington Union explains: Under the guidance of the schools’ Educational Technology Team (ETT), a five-year plan started this fall when every student at BHS received an Apple iPad… Continue Reading ›
4 Best Practices for Developing a Strategy for Mobile Security
February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Today’s workers are more mobile than ever before, depending on a wide variety of network-enabled electronic devices to get their jobs done. As a result, wireless networks are no longer just a convenience, a nice-to-have feature that impresses visitors to your building. They are crucial to the everyday performance of most any organization. In this kind of environment, companies must have an effective strategy for providing not only mobile communications, but also ensuring the security of those communications. Coming up with such a plan requires a willingness to review how your organization works, and how the needs of your users… Continue Reading ›
3 Approaches to Identifying Mobile Devices
February 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
When it comes to managing wireless devices on your network, you’ve got two basic options: treat the device as a known entity that is allowed to access the corporate network, or as an unknown entity that is not. But there are several ways to make that determination, says Chris Williams, a systems engineer with Carousel Industries, and they are progressively more granular and useful. Fingerprinting and Web Browser Snooping The simplest way to identify a device is through fingerprinting or web browser snooping. With fingerprinting, when the device logs on, it performs a DHCP request. In that request is a… Continue Reading ›
3 Keys to Setting Up a Temporary Wireless LAN
January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As more and more people roam this earth armed with smart phones, tablets and all manner of communications devices, they pretty much expect to have wireless Internet access all the time. And being outside at, say, a corporate barbecue or a sporting event is no excuse not to have connectivity. Similarly, first-responders in emergency situations often need Internet access in places where such access doesn’t normally exist – and fast. The answer is a temporary wireless LANs, which are becoming quite easy to set up, according to Chris Williams, a systems engineer with Carousel Industries. “If you want to deploy… Continue Reading ›
1G WiFi Is On the Way – Is Your Network Ready?
December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A new spec for 1G wireless LANs is making its way through the standards process and companies would be wise to pay attention, as it will almost certainly factor into the way you think about both your wired and wireless network infrastructure. The IEEE is working on 802.11ac, a standard for 1G bps WiFi networks. While the official standard isn’t expected to be complete until 2013, you can expect to see working products well before that. According to a blogger at Network Computing: Popular predictions regarding 802.11ac have millions of devices in users’ hands by 2012 and billions by 2015.… Continue Reading ›
Meeting the Security Challenges of Educational Institutions
November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
For security professionals, educational institutions present a number of challenges that are quite different from the corporate world. It’s an environment with distinct user groups – students, faculty and staff – that require both separation from one another and the ability to collaborate. In K-12 schools, there’s a need to police Internet access. In universities, there is the need to monitor and log traffic and usage. And many institutions have to comply with standards such as PCI and HIPAA, if they take credit cards and store student health data. To get a handle on how schools are dealing with these… Continue Reading ›
PCI Compliance and Wireless Networks: What You Need to Know
September 29, 2011 By 1 Comment
Any company that accepts credit cards has to worry about staying in compliance with the (PCI DSS) v1.2. And companies that have wireless LANs have additional requirements to meet, even if no credit card data travels over the wireless network. To learn more about the requirements, we talked with Chris Williams, pre-sales systems engineer for Carousel Industries and one of the company’s wireless experts. From a PCI perspective, companies fall into one of three categories when it comes to wireless, each with varying requirements. PCI Category 1: No Wireless in Use A company that has no wireless LANs in place… Continue Reading ›
Data Underscores Case for Better Wireless Management
September 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
More evidence of the need for centralized wireless technology management, which was the subject of a post last week: New data from market research firm IDC suggest that the global market for enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) technology grew almost 30 percent year-over-year in the second quarter. That number is pretty astonishing, especially when you consider the overall state of the U.S. economy. The IDC report, “Worldwide Quarterly Wireless LAN Tracker,” sizes the market for WLANs at $725 million during the second quarter of 2011; that was an increase of 43.4 percent sequentially, over the first quarter of 2011. Products using… Continue Reading ›
4 Reasons You Need Centralized Wireless Management
August 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
As wireless LANs get more ubiquitous, IT may well find they’re spending an inordinate amount of time managing them, especially in organizations with multiple sites. Configuration changes require logging in to the controller at each site, troubleshooting can be a bear, and reporting is all but impossible. That is, unless you have a centralizedmanagement strategy. With centralized wireless management, the wireless controllers that manage access points in each location all connect to a central management console, from where IT can monitor and control each ‘remote controller’ (as opposed to ‘remote control’, which apparently only my 11 year old daughter has… Continue Reading ›
