3com WX4400 3CRWX440095A User Manual

Bonded Auth™ (bonded authentication) is a security feature that binds 
an 802.1X user authentication to authentication of the machine from 
which the user is attempting to log on. When this feature is enabled, MSS 
authenticates the user only if the machine the user is on has already been 
authenticated.

By default, MSS does not bind user authentication to machine 
authentication. A trusted user can log on from any machine attached to 
the network.

You can use bonded authentication with Microsoft Windows clients that 
support separate 802.1X authentication for the machine itself and for a 
user who uses the machine to log on to the network. 

Network administrators sometimes use machine authentication in a 
Microsoft Active Directory domain to run login scripts, and to control 
defaults, application access and updates, and so on. Bonded 
authentication provides an added security measure, by ensuring that a 
trusted user can log onto the network only from a trusted machine 
known to Active Directory.

For example, if user bob.mycorp.com has a trusted laptop PC used for 
work but also has a personal laptop PC, you might want to bind Bob’s 
authentication with the authentication of his workplace laptop, 
host/bob-laptop.mycorp.com. In this case, Bob can log on to the 
company network only from his work laptop.

When bonded authentication is enabled, MSS retains information about 
the machine session when a user logs on from that machine. MSS 
authenticates the user only if there has already been a successful machine 
authentication. Evidence of the machine session in MSS indicates that the 
machine has successfully authenticated and is therefore trusted by MSS. 
If MSS does not have session information for the machine, MSS refuses to 
authenticate the user and does not allow the user onto the network from 
the unauthenticated machine.