As people access more and more information through digital media, data and bandwidth requirements across the distributed enterprise skyrocket. According to CIO Magazine, the growth of business apps like Skype for Business or personal media has skyrocketed 180% - 210% since 2015. Data usage has also ballooned 900%, from 1 billion petabytes to 9 billion petabytes - that's 9 million billion gigabytes (KPCB Internet Trends Report 2016). These numbers mean that employees will be using their phones, tablets, or IoT devices to access work-related tasks from anywhere, not just central offices. IT has a unique opportunity to coach employees and other users on new ways to access networks, but what threat does this pose for internal network security? What happens when a trusted user plugs an unsecured device into the network, or when a more malicious user logs in to cause the network harm?
Gartner has predicted that 30% of all advanced attacks will be targeted at branch networks, meaning we as IT pros need to bring more efficient and dynamic controls over who or what devices have access to corporate information. IT deploys security in many ways, from centralized firewalls like Palo Alto and contextual policy engines like ClearPass at the data center, campus, branch, or directly at the device level with EMM or MDM solutions like MobileIron or AirWatch. These serve very well to protect the distributed enterprise from internal threats and to authenticate users, however, to address internal network intrusions and rogue devices, we deploy WIPS.
The Aruba WIPS solution is fully integrated into Aruba wireless infrastructure to protect the distributed network against unauthorized Wi-Fi clients and ad hoc networks. Unlike other vendors, Aruba WIPS features such as TotalWatchTM delivers the ability to scan all channels of the RF spectrum regardless of what channel an Aruba AP is assigned. Based on location signatures and client classification, Aruba will drop illegal requests and generate alerts to notify administrators of an attack. This is ideal for IT to secure branch or large campus environments. For more information on unique WIPS features like TotalWatchTM, wireless tar pitting, and others, check out the RFProtect datasheet here.
A large financial services customer has been evaluating Aruba's integrated WIPS solution against a third party overlay proposal. They ultimately selected Aruba's solution because of the added value in coupling a WIPS tool directly with the access point (APs). They were also able to save on additional deployment and maintenance costs compared to an overlay architecture.
Learn more about Aruba's WIPS solution!
Dave Chen is a product marketing manager for WLAN and SD-WAN solutions at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. He's been at Aruba for more than five years.
