Cisco Cisco 2000 Series Wireless LAN Controller White Paper

Introduction
 Prerequisites
      Requirements
      Conventions
 Trusted AP Policies

What is a Trusted AP?
How to Configure an AP as a Trusted AP from the WLC GUI?
      Understanding Trusted AP Policy Settings
How to Configure Trusted AP Policies on the WLC?
      Trusted AP Policy Violation Alert Message
 Related Information

This document describes the trusted AP wireless protection policies on a Wireless LAN Controller (WLC),
defines trusted AP policies, and provides a brief description of all trusted AP policies.

Ensure that you have a basic understanding of Wireless LAN security parameters (such as SSID, encryption,
authentication, and so on).

Refer to Cisco Technical Tips Conventions for more information on document conventions.

Trusted AP policies is a security feature in the controller that is designed to be used in scenarios where
customers have a parallel autonomous AP network along with the controller. In that scenario, the autonomous
AP can be marked as the trusted AP on the controller, and the user can define policies for these trusted APs
(which should use only WEP or WPA, our own SSID, short preamble, and so on). If any of these AP fail to
meet these policies, the controller raises an alarm to the network management device (Wireless Control
System) that states a trusted AP violated a configured policy.

Trusted APs are APs that are not part of an organization. However, they do not cause a security threat to the
network. These APs are also called friendly APs. Several scenarios exist where you might want to configure
an AP as a trusted AP.

For example, you might have different categories of APs in your network such as: