Controlling Access to Access Points

Jun 21,2010 by alperen

Make certain you have taken a complete inventory of all the access point
devices within your organization. Do you know who has physical access
to the rooms in which these devices are located? You need to restrict
these areas so that nonessential personnel don’t have access; this will
help prevent their settings being changed to make it possible for a hacker
to access your network without anyone even knowing the difference.

It is essential that you maintain these controls by executing a complete
site security survey to determine and establish the most effective
placement points for any wireless access points so that transmission
coverage is limited to areas within the building. If you can log into your
network from the parking lot of your facility, so can a hacker just trying
to gain access!
Once you have tested your site for these problems, you should also
make it a priority to test the transmission range of your network access
point. It is imperative that you find out exactly how far your wireless coverage
extends, so that you can take the proper measures to shield your
signal from undesired areas near your corporate or network facilities.
Another test of the physical limitations of your access points is to
determine if any other WLANs are operating near yours. Your site survey
should include the ability to test nearby areas for other wireless networks.
You can then take appropriate measures to protect your network
against the transmissions from someone else’s WLAN.
One way to protect your WLAN is to make certain that the access
points from your WLAN are at least five or six channels apart from any
other nearby WLAN than your site survey detected. One of the problems
in having WLANs close to one another is “interference,” which may
cause undesired reductions in throughput, but also mask a real incoming
hacker attack hidden under the interference patterns.
To give yourself better odds at ensuring that only authorized personnel
have access to your WLAN, specifically locate your access points on
the inside of your buildings with enough shielding on exterior walls and
windows to block the signal from straying too far from the building
itself.