Cisco Cisco Aironet Access Point Module for Wireless Security White Paper

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White Paper

Cisco Aironet Access Point Wireless Security
Module (WSM)

Executive Summary

With the rapid growth of wireless for day-to-day business needs, the discussion of how best to monitor and secure

the corporate wireless network is gaining considerable traction. The topic becomes even more crucial when you

factor in the sheer number of devices that are connecting - and the fact that many people use two to three wireless

devices at the same time.

To monitor and secure a wireless network effectively, you must:

●

Understand in real-time the quality of the available wireless connection anywhere in your network

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Identify devices within your network that could interfere with the quality of the wireless connection

●

Isolate and proactively avoid any source of interference

●

Identify devices enabling an unsecured opening in your network, whether they are accidentally or

maliciously doing so

●

Continuously scan for network attacks and proactively contain and mitigate these attacks

●

Identify the location of devices within the network, including client devices and sources of interference or

threats to the network

The traditional approach to monitoring and securing the network is to deploy a dedicated overlay of wireless

access points interspersed with the access points that your corporate users use daily. The function of these

dedicated access points -

often referred to as “monitor mode access points” - is to listen to all channels on the 2.4-

and 5-

GHz bands. Depending on the vendor’s solution, the information gleaned from listening is used to analyze

the state of wireless connectivity (typically signal strength), as well as to identify potential security threats.

This dedicated overlay comes with obvious costs:

●

Cost for the additional access points

●

Cost for additional Ethernet cabling infrastructure

●

Ethernet port at the upstream access layer switching device

●

Operational costs of managing additional access points

The Cisco Aironet

Access Point Wireless Security Module (WSM) for the Aironet 3600 and 3700 Series Access

Points introduces a new way for customers to design and deploy their wireless networks. By tightly coupling data

connectivity, spectrum analysis, and security threat detection and mitigation into a single, multipurpose access

point, this new Cisco

solution eliminates the need for two separately deployed networks.